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THE COLLEGE MAN AND 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 



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THE COLLEGE MAK AND 
THE COLLEGE WOMAIST 



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WILLIAM DeWITT HYDE 

(I 

President of Bowdoin College 




BOSTON AND NEW YORK 
HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN AND COMPANY 

1906 



M^^ 



LIBRARY of CONGRESS 

Two CoDies Received 

MAR 8 1906 

^Copyn^m Entry 

CLASS CC XXc. No, 

/ it C ( 6 ^ 

^ COPY A. 






COPYRIGHT 1906 BY WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE 
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED 



Published March iqo6 



TO 

THEODORE ROOSEVELT 

WHO AS LEGISLATOR, COMMISSIONER, SECRETARY 

COLONEL, AUTHOR, GOVERNOR 

VICE-PRESIDENT, PRESIDENT AND PEACEMAKER 

HAS WROUGHT IN THE WORLD 

WHAT HE WAS TAUGHT IN COLLEGE 

AND SHOWN THE POWER FOR GOOD 

A COLLEGE MAN CAN BE 



PREFACE 

Now that we have about sixty thousand men and 
thirty thousand women in the colleges of the United 
States, the College Man and the College Woman 
deserve sympathetic interpretation and intelligent 
appreciation. To reveal to themselves and to the 
world these college men and women as they are, 
and as they are capable of becoming, is the purpose 
of this book. It deals with the personal, ethical, 
spiritual side of college life, and with organization 
and administration only incidentally. It presents 
as the best spiritual drink for college youth a blend 
of Greek sanity and Christian service. 

Nearly everything in it has been presented to 
college audiences at Harvard, Yale, Pennsylvania, 
Syracuse, Chicago, Northwestern, Amherst, Bow- 
doin, Dartmouth, Williams, Haverford, Colgate, 
Mount Holyoke, Eockford, Smith, Vassar, or 
Wellesley. Nearly all of it has been printed in 
"The Atlantic Monthly," "Scribner's Magazine," 
"The Educational Review," "The International 
Monthly," "The Outlook," CroweU's "What is 
Worth While " Series, or pamphlets published by 
colleges to which the addresses were delivered. 
Taken as a whole, they represent what twenty 



viii PREFACE 

years of life in a college have taught me, and 
what I in turn have tried to teach others, about 
what college students mean to be, and what college 
graduates may be expected to become. I trust it 
may assure over-anxious parents that not every 
aberration of their sons and daughters while in 
college is either final or fatal ; persuade critics of 
college administration that our problem is not so 
simple as they seem to think ; and inspire the pub- 
lic with the conviction, cherished by every college 
officer, that college students, with all their faults 
and follies, are the best fellows in the world ; and 
that notwithstanding much crude speculation about 
things human, and some honest skepticism concern- 
ing things divine, the great social institutions of 
family and industry and church and state may be 
safely intrusted to their hearts and hands. 

The literary form of the second chapter, though 
unusual, was unavoidable. The college undergrad- 
uate is a being of too complex and swiftly changing 
phases for external description to catch and repro- 
duce. If he is to be truthfully depicted at all, the 
only way is to place him in intimate and confiden- 
tial relations and let him "give himself away." 

The one biographical chapter is introduced be- 
cause the office of college president is preeminently 
a personal office, and is best described in terms of 
a life and work which express a personal character. 

I have ventured to recognize the fact that man 



PREFACE IX 

and woman are not just alike, and to suggest that 
what God has put asunder man cannot satisfac- 
torily join together. 

While I have introduced two or three college 
sermons, it will be evident that the main reliance 
of a college for its moulding of men and women is 
not preaching or exhortation, still less rules and 
regulations, least of all threats and penalties ; but 
actual living, in an atmosphere of freedom, where 
each person has returned to him frankly, swiftly, 
mercilessly, the social judgment that his acts invite 
and his character deserves. The ethical and spir- 
itual fruits of a college course, likewise, are not to 
be measured mainly by verbal professions of piety 
and virtue, but by those deep-grooved sub-conscious 
habits of good-fellowship and courtesy, kindliness 
and courage, thoroughness and patience, sincerity 
and sympathy, serviceableness and self-sacrii&ce, 
which, whether in the press of business and the 
clash of politics, or in the quiet of home and the 
joy of the social circle, are the marks of the true 
College Man and College Woman. 

William DeWitt Hyde. 

BowDOiN College, 

Brunswick, Maine. 



CONTENTS 

PAGE 

I. The Offer of the College . . 3 

II. The Transformation of the Under- 
graduate 4 

III. Greek Qualities in the College Man 46 

IV. The Career of Self-Conquest . . 81 

V. The Continuity and Contrast of 

College and the World . . 114 

VI. The More Excellent Way . . 129 

VII. The Sacrifices of a College Man . 150 

VIII. The Creed of a College Class . 169 

IX. The Choice of the College Woman 175 

X. The Worth of the Womanly Ideal 194 

XI. The Earnings of College Graduates 219 

XII. A Great College President . 223 

XIII. The Personality of the Teacher . 247 

XIV. The Six Partners in College Ad- 

ministration .... 275 

XV. The College 306 

XVI. Alumni Ideals .... 332 



THE COLLEGE MAN AND 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 



THE COLLEGE MAN AND 
THE COLLEGE WOMAN 



The Offer of the College 

TO be at home in all lands and all ages; to 
count Nature a familiar acquaintance, and 
Art an intimate friend ; to gain a standard for the 
appreciation of other men's work and the criticism 
of your own ; to carry the keys of the world's li- 
brary in your pocket, and feel its resources behind 
you in whatever task you undertake ; to make 
hosts of friends among the men of your own age 
who are to be leaders in all walks of life ; to lose 
yourself in generous enthusiasms and cooperate 
with others for common ends ; to learn manners 
from students who are gentlemen, and form char- 
acter under professors who are Christians, — this 
is the offer of the college for the best four years 
of your life. 



II 

The Transformation of the Undergraduate 

FRESHMAN SORROWS 

Bradford College, October 24, 1901. 

DEAE Father, — Your letter, with welcome 
check inclosed, is at hand. I note your ad- 
vice to " wear the same-sized hat, and keep sawing 
wood ; " but really I did n't need it, for the Sophs 
attend to the former, and the Profs provide for 
the latter. 

No, I am not suffering from '' swelled head " yet. 
You know you wished me to keep up my music. 
Last week a notice was put up on the bulletin-board, 
inviting all candidates for the College Glee Club 
to appear at a certain room, at nine o'clock Satur- 
day evening. Among the candidates who came were 
two other Freshmen and myself. They told us that 
we must all put on dress suits, as personal appear- 
ance was a large element in fitness for the position. 
As I did not have any, they lent me one, or rather 
parts of two, — waistcoat and trousers that were far 
too small, and a coat that was miles too big. Then 
they had us come in and make bows, and show how 
we would lead in a prima donna. Then they had 
us stand on our heels and sing low notes ; stand on 



THE TRANSFORMATION 5 

tiptoes and sing high notes ; sing everything we 
knew from comic songs to the doxology in long me- 
tre ; and finally, about half -past eleven, dismissed 
us with the statement that the other two were the 
better singers, but that my presence and personal 
appearance was greatly in my favor ; and that the 
decision would be announced on the bulletin-board 
the next morning. We had not been out of the 
room two minutes before we recognized that we had 
been awfully '' taken in.'' I did not sleep much 
that night ; and whenever, I fell into a doze, the 
vision of that bulletin-board would dance before 
my eyes and wake me up. If ever I wished I was 
dead and buried, I did that night. It seemed as if 
I could never get up and go to breakfast, where they 
would all be talking about it, and walk into chapel 
with everybody knowing what a fool I had made of 
myself the night before. It made me wish I either 
had taken my dose of this sort of thing three years 
ago at a fitting school, or else had gone to one of 
the great universities, where a fellow can be simply 
a unit in the vast whole, of whom nobody takes the 
slightest notice. But you always said that the small 
colleges have a great advantage over the large ones, 
in the fact that here the individual is made to be 
somebody, and take the consequences of his own 
action upon his own head. Well, I have made an 
ass of myseK to begin with ; and everybody knows 
it and is guying me about it. But I am getting 



6 THE TRANSFORMATION 

used to it, and don't mind it as mucli as I did. I 
have had a good many calls by way of congratula- 
tion on my election to the Glee Club ; and as these 
were the first calls of persons I had not had the 
privilege of knowing before, it seemed appropriate 
(and I was informed that it was an established col- 
lege custom) that I should treat. I think that by 
taking the thing good-naturedly, and entertaining 
my guests handsomely, I have made more friends 
than I have lost. 

Your affectionate son, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

Bradfobd College, November 6, 1901. 

My dear Mother, — You say you are " afraid 
I am homesick ; " for I write all " about things at 
home and nothing about things here." Well, I have 
been just a bit homesick, but I am getting bravely 
over it. This time I will try to tell you the things 
you want to know. 

You need n't worry about my clothes ; they are 
all right. I tore a three-cornered hole in my trousers 
the other day ; but I fixed it up first-rate. I tried 
one of those fine needles to begin with ; but it was 
no use. So I fished out a darning-needle, got some 
black linen thread, and went at it. I took the thread 
double and twisted, left a long end at the beginning ; 
sewed it over and over, as you call it, taking stitches 
about a quarter of an inch apart, fetched back the 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 7 

end next to the needle to the long end I left at the 
beginning, and tied them together. Some Sophs 
made great fun of it ; wanted to know if I was 
trying to demonstrate the pons asinomm on my 
trousers leg. That night I ripped up the whole 
seam, or whatever you call it, I had made, turi;ied 
the trousers wrong side out ; proceeded as before 
except that I took stitches only half as big ; tied 
the ends on the inside where they don't show ; and 
the trousers look as good as ever. 

You ask particularly about my religious life. I 
don't know what to say. The first morning I went 
to chapel, some one who seemed to be the usher 
asked me if I would like to rent a sitting. I was 
fool enough to give him a dollar for a seat ; and 
then he ushered me into a pew at one side near 
the front which is reserved for the Faculty. I tell 
you I didn't feel much like praying that morn- 
ing. 

The first really familiar and home-like thing I 
found when I came here was the Y. M. C. A. re- 
ception to the Freshmen. A large number of the 
students and several of the Faculty were present. 
There were a few addresses of an informal nature 
by the professors. Then we sang hymns, and re- 
freshments were served. I got acquainted with three 
of the professors, to one of whom I recite ; and 
the whole affair went a long way toward making 
me feel at home here. 



8 THE TRANSFORMATION 

As for the meetings : well, I go to them regu- 
larly. I camiot say I altogether enjoy them. Some 
of the fellows have such wonderful experiences of 
grace, that I don't know what to make of it. I 
never had anything of the kind. If that is essen- 
tial to a man's being a Christian — why, I simply 
am not in it. I can't conceive of myseK as feeling 
like that. I don't see the sense of it. It does n't 
seem natural. I want to do right. I know I do 
wrong, — I know I need to be turned right about 
face once in so often, or else I should go straight 
down hill. And I am glad to spend an hour each 
week with the f eUows who are trying to get a brace 
in the same direction. 

To tell the truth I don't get much out of church 
here. The ministers are smart enough, and they 
roll out great glowing periods. But when they are 
through I cannot tell for the life of me what they 
have been driving at. You hear a lot about jus- 
tification, sanctification, and atonement ; and then 
you hear a lot about Phrygia, Pamphylia, and Mes- 
opotamia. Once in a while there comes along a 
man who seems to understand us. He will throw 
out some practical and moral problem that we are 
grappling with ; pile up the arguments in favor 
of the indulgence just as they pile up in our own 
minds ; and then turn around, knock them all to 
splinters, and show how much more noble and 
manly it is to overcome temptation ; and show us 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 9 

Christ as the great champion in the moral and 
spiritual warfare of the world. 

It is a good deal harder to be a Christian here 
in college than it was at home, and the things that 
ought to be a help seem to be a hindrance. I ex- 
pect to have rather a sorry time of it here for a 
while; but by far the greatest of my sorrows is 
that I have not been more faithfully, 

Your dutiful and grateful boy, 

Claeence Mansfield. 

Bradford College, May 30, 1902. 

Dear Helen, — I wonder if time flies as 
swiftly with you Willoughby College girls as with 
us ? It seems but yesterday that we were gliding 
along together to the music of the merry sleigh- 
bells over the glistening snow. Of course you have 
your good times there. Your afternoon teas ten- 
dered by Sophomores to Freshmen ; your debates 
in the gymnasium on municipal suffrage for women ; 
your Halloween frolics ; your basket-ball contests ; 
your boat-races rowed for form only ; your midnight 
lunches interrupted by " the Pestilence that walketh 
in darkness " — that nickname of yours for a med- 
dlesome Prof, beats the record — are all very de- 
lightful as portrayed in your charming letters ; but 
compared with foot-ball and base-ball, boxing and 
fencing, rushes and tugs-of-war, turkey suppers on 
the Faculty table with any one of three parties, 



10 THE TRANSFORMATION 

the owner of the turkeys, the college authorities, or 
the upper-classmen, liable to swoop down on you at 
any moment and gobble up the feast, I must con- 
fess that your worst dissipations seem a little tame. 

I have no doubt, however, that you make up in 
study what is lacking in sport. I have n't seen any- 
body here quite so completely carried away with 
Sophocles, or so in love with the Odes of Horace, 
or so fascinated with German syntax as you seem 
to be. Your lamentations over spherical trigonome- 
try, however, would evoke many a responsive moan. 
That was really credible from a college man's point 
of view ; but if I were not so sure of your thorough 
genuineness and sincerity, I should set down those 
raptures about philologies and trilogies either to 
satire or to affectation. We men are not taken 
that way. I am glad you like them, though. To 
see a little gleam of sense, real or imaginary, 
through the interminable technical jargon a fellow 
has to grind out, must be a relief. I am heartily 
glad for you if the gods have granted you such a 
special dispensation. 

I must confess, though, that I am beginning to 
get a real hold of Greek. Professor Bird has us 
read the whole of an author in translation , write 
essays on the times, characters, customs, and insti- 
tutions ; and then read in the original such pas- 
sages as are specially significant in throwing light 
on the main characters and events. We get the 



jf 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 11 

life first in this way ; and the letters afterward as 
the expression of that life. Then, too, he shows 
pictures of Greek architecture and art with the 
stereopticon in the evening ; tells us the story of 
the statues of which we have casts in the Aj^t Build- 
ing, and of the coins and vases in the cases there. 
Life is interesting in all its forms ; and it is slowly 
dawning upon me that these old fellows lived about 
the gayest, freest, loveliest life men ever lived on 
earth. But from the way Greek was ground out in 
the high school one would never have dreamed the 
old dry roots once had such sweet juice in them. 
And some of the other languages here are taught 
by young fellows fresh from German, or German- 
American institutions, who regard the text, even 
of Horace or Goethe or Moliere, as just so much 
grammatical straw to thrash the syntax out of. 
When I see what Greek is, and what the other 
languages and literatures might be if only we had 
a man and not a thesis in cap and gown to teach 
them, it makes me mad. And yet you girls fall 
down and worship just that sort of a creature ! 

Boys and girls make very different kinds of stu- 
dents. I think we get along better apart than to- 
gether. You are docile, conscientious, and at least 
outwardly courteous. You eat whatever is set be- 
fore you, asking no questions for conscience's sake. 
You study just as hard whether you like a subject 
or not. You do your best every time. 



12 THE TRANSFORMATION 

Now that is very sweet and lovely. But I should 
think it would spoil your teachers to treat them 
that way. With us it is different. If we don't like 
a thing, we say so. As for these fellows that try- 
to cram their old philology down our throats, we 
make their existence pretty uncomfortable. The 
other day the Latin tutor asked a fellow the gender 
of ovum^ and he answered, " You can't tell until 
it 's hatched." They won't teach us anything we 
want to know, and so we won't learn anything 
they want to teach. "We keep asking the same 
old question over and over again ; and make him 
explain the simplest of all his favorite fine dis- 
tinctions every time it occurs. Well, I must stop 
somewhere. I really did not know I was so inter- 
ested in my studies, or had so many theories of 
education. You always understand me better than 
anybody else does. When I began this letter, I 
did n't think I cared much about these things any- 
way. But you are so in earnest about them, that 
I believe I have caught the inspiration. I am a 
many-sided being ; some sides are good and some are 
bad ; some are wise and some are very foolish. You 
always bring out the best side ; and for fear of de- 
ceiving you and making you think I am better than 
I really am, I have to let you inside, and show you 
just how foolish and light-minded I am. If I al- 
ways had you to talk to, I think I should be a very 
much more diligent student than I am. Not that I 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 13 

crave coeducation. Oh, no ! What Emerson says 
of friendship is especially true of the friendship of 
college boys and girls : '' The condition which high 
friendship demands is ability to do without it. 
There must be very two, before there can be very 
one. Let us buy our entrance to this guild by a 
long probation." I wish you would read the whole 
essay. I am immensely fond of it ; and I always 
think of you when I read it. The two writers I 
love best are Carlyle and Emerson; although I 
don't profess to understand much of either of them. 
Carlyle braces me up when I am tempted to loaf 
and shirk. Emerson tones me down when I am 
tempted to pretense and insincerity. Both tend to 
make me more simple and true and real — more 
like what you are and what I fondly fancy you 
would like to have me be. 

Your faithful friend, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

sophomore conceits 

Bradford College, October 25, 1902. 

Dear Father, — Now that it is all over, I sup- 
pose I may as well tell you about it. Perhaps you 
saw in the " Herald" that we came near having a 
class rebellion here yesterday. 

Two or three of us ventured to wear, into Pro- 
fessor Bird's recitation-room the other morning, 
some vestiges of the attire which had done duty in 



14 THE TRANSFORMATION 

a parade the previous evening. Professor Bird said 
that if we wished to make fools of ourselves on the 
public streets he, as an individual, had nothing to 
say about it; but that when it came to bringing 
such nonsense into his recitation-room he would not 
stand it, and we might leave the room at once. 

Immediately after recitation the class held a 
rousing indignation meeting in Old College Hall, 
and passed the following resolutions : " That we, 
the members of the Class of 1905, most emphati- 
cally and indignantly protest against this act of 
tyranny and usurpation ; and that we will attend 
no more college exercises until this wrong shall be 
redressed." 

As I was one of the persons especially aggrieved 
I was made chairman of a committee of three, which 
was appointed to wait upon the president and pre- 
sent our resolutions. 

He listened very respectfully to our representa- 
tions. When we had finished he said that there 
seemed to be a hopeless division of opinion on the 
subject, — the faculty being firmly and finally com- 
mitted to the position taken by Professor Bird, 
and the class being equally tenacious of the posi- 
tion taken in the resolutions. Accordingly, he pro- 
posed that we should refer the whole subject to a 
committee of three alumni, of whom the class should 
name one, the president should name one, and the 
two thus appointed should name the third. 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 15 

The class, after some discussion, voted to accept 
the president's proposition ; and we appointed as 
our representative on this committee a young grad- 
uate of the previous year who had been a leader in 
all manner of deviltry while he was in college, and 
is hanging around the college this year as a self- 
appointed coach of the foot-ball team until he can 
find something to do. We went back and reported 
that we had accepted his proposition, and named 
our referee. The president then gravely announced 
that he had selected you as his representative on 
the committee to which the matter should be re- 
ferred; that he would telegraph for you at once; 
and that he should expect me and the others inter- 
ested to appear before the committee in the precise 
apparel which had been the occasion of the con- 
troversy. 

You can imagine that I was a good deal taken 
back. I did not relish having you called down here 
from your business, two hundred miles, to sit in 
judgment on that question. I thought I could an- 
ticipate the decision and the manner in which it 
would be delivered. So I persuaded the class to 
drop the matter, and we have resumed attendance 
at recitations. 

I give you the full account. This is all there is in 
it. The reporters got hold of it and have written 
it up with a great deal of exaggeration and embel- 
lishment. So if you read my name or see my photo- 



16 THE TRANSFORMATION 

graph in connection with the instigation of a great 
rebellion, don't be disturbed, and tell mother not to 
worry. Your affectionate son, 

Clakence. 

Bradford College, November 30, 1902. 

My dear Helen, — The foot-ball season is over, 
and I must tell you about it. As you know, we won 
the championship ; and I happened to play quite an 
important part in it. The opposing team was made 
up of great giants from the farms ; while our team, 
were mostly light city boys, quick as lightning, and 
up to all the tricks and fine points. Their game 
was to mass themselves on one weak point in the 
line, and pound away at that time after time. In 
spite of all that we could do they would gain a few 
feet each time ; and it looked as though they would 
win by steadily shoving us inch by inch down the 
field. When they had it almost over, we made a 
great brace and held them and got the baU. 

Then we made a long gain, bringing the ball 
within forty yards of their goal. The time was 
nearly up ; and if we had lost it again, the game 
would have been either a tie or a defeat. As a 
last resort, the signal was given for a goal from the 
field. The ball was passed to me : I had just time 
for a drop kick in the general direction of the goal, 
without an instant for taking aim, when their big- 
gest man came down on me; and that was the 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 17 

last I can remember. As all my force had gone 
into the kick, and I was standing still and had 
almost lost my balance in the act of kicking ; while 
he weighed seventy pounds more than I, and was 
coming at full speed, you can imagine that I went 
down with a good deal of force onto the frozen 
ground. 

The next thing I knew I was in my room, and the 
doctor was working over me. To my first question, 
" Was it a goal ? " the Captain replied, " Yes, old 
man, you won the game for us." My injury proved 
to be nothing serious ; and a few stitches in a scalp 
wound was all the medical treatment necessary. 
By the way, don't mention this part of the affair 
around home, where the folks will be likely to 
hear of it. They would worry, and that would do 
no good. I was at some loss how to charge up the 
doctor's bill on my cash account; but in view of 
the stitches, I charged it to " sewing." I am just 
having a glorious time of it this year. There are 
lots of foolish girls here, as there are everywhere ; 
and I don't see why a fellow should not have some 
fun with them. My foot-ball prowess has opened 
the doors of all the best society to me ; and I am 
lionized wherever I go. I can take my pick of the 
girls; and I get along with them first-rate. They 
talk foot-ball as soon as they are introduced ; and 
that is a subject on which I feel perfectly at home. 
There are half a dozen on whom I have made a 



18 THE TRANSFORMATION 

perfect mash ; and perhaps I ought to confess that 
there is one in particular toward whom I am in- 
clined to reciprocate. She is a little older than I 
(some of the fellows who are jealous of me call 
her the college widow), but with shrugging of her 
shoulders and elevating her eyes when one makes 
a particularly piquant remark, she is young enough 
in her manner. We led the dance the other evening, 
and it was great fun to see the fellows green with 
envy, and the longing looks of more than one girl 
whose eyes as much as said, ^'Oh, if I were only 
where that girl is." 

I was considerably amused at the account you 
gave of your harmless serenade under the windows 
of the obstreperous Miss K. ; but I was disgusted 
at the specimen of petticoat government that fol- 
lowed. How perfectly absurd to scold a set of 
such innocent and guileless creatures, who never 
entertained so much as a shadow of a naughty 
thought in all your lives ! 

Our dean would n't have made such a fuss over a 
little thing like that. Let me tell you what hap- 
pened here the other night. We have an instruc- 
tor whom we hate. I don't know just why. He is 
a wooden fellow. He tries to apply high-school 
methods of discipline and instruction to college 
men ! Just think of it ! We don't propose to stand 
it. So we "fixed" his recitation-room the other 
night, and among other things propped up the 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 19 

skeleton from the Medical School in his chair, and 
put between his teeth strips of paper on which the 
instructor's oft-recurring phrases were inscribed. 
I was in it. The dean got onto it, and I was sum- 
moned to his office. I expected I should catch it, 
and was making arrangements to leave town on 
an early train. 

The dean, however, did not refer to the affair 
once. He said that he was afraid that I was not 
giving to my studies the undivided attention that 
they deserved, and asked what was the trouble. 
We talked over my plans and purposes in so far 
as I have any ; and then he tried to show me how 
these studies in general, and the one which is taught 
in that room in particular, have a vital relation to my 
whole intellectual future. I never realized before 
how hard the college is trying, with very scanty re- 
sources, to provide for us a satisfactory course, or 
how interested in our individual welfare the officers 
of it are. I came away with a very much better 
understanding of what I am here for. I had a very 
pleasant interview, and was almost glad to have had 
it ; though after the tacit understanding to which 
we came, it would be fearfully embarassing to have 
another based on a similar offense. I shall give the 
college no further trouble along that line, I assure 
you. 

Now, was not this masculine mode of discipline 
better than yours ? Women seem to read their 



20 THE TRANSFORMATION 

Scriptures to the effect that without shedding of 
tears, there shall be no remission of mischief. We 
men don't take much stock in tears. And such 
tear-provoking talk as seems to be so efficacious 
with you girls would run off from our toughened 
consciences like water off a duck's back. 

Now, my dear Helen, if I seem to hold women 
in general, and women's ways of doing things, in 
somewhat light esteem, you know I regard you as a 
shining exception ; and think whatever you do is 
perfect ; and know you must have looked perfectly 
lovely even in those absurd and wasted tears. 
Faithfully your friend, 

Clakence Mansfield. 

Bbadford College, April 8, 1903. 

My dear Mother, — That is just like you, 
mother, " to look with more favor on my friendship 
for Helen than on my passion for Kate," or the 
" college widow," as you hatefully insist on calling 
her. You are a woman, and you can't see things 
as I do. Why, Kate just adores me ; idolizes me ; 
says that in all the history of the college there 
never was a fellow quite like me. Now, that is the 
sort of a girl for me. She makes me feel satisfied 
with myself. And she is pretty and fascinating. 

As for Helen, what do you think she had the 
impertinence to write to me ? I had written her a 
nice letter, in which, to be sure, I made one or two 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 21 

slighting and patronizing references to women in 
general and petticoat government for colleges in 
particular, and this is what I got : — 

"You HORRID, CONCEITED THING, No, thank 

you. If you cannot respect my sex, and speak re- 
spectfully of my college, please pay no more of 
your silly compliments to a ' shining exception.' 

" P. S. If in addition to the fact of feminine fool- 
ishness, of which you are so well assured, you wish 
to continue your studies into the philosophy of the 
phenomenon, and in spite of her being a woman 
will for once consult the world's greatest novelist 
(perhaps you can bring yourself to it, in view of 
her masculine pseudonym), you are most respect- 
fully referred to a remark of Mrs. Poyser on the 
subject." 

Now, you surely don't suppose a college Sopho- 
more is going to stand such talk as that. The 
remark referred to is, "I 'm not denyin' that 
women are foolish; God Almighty made 'em to 
match the men." 

I have had enough of Helen. What a fellow 
wants of a girl is some one to reflect with a halo 
of sympathy and admiration his own views and 
opinions. He does n't want to be stirred up and 
set to thinking. Now, you know I want to please 
you in everything. But in these matters you must 
admit that I am a more competent judge of what 
suits me than anybody else can be for me. I 



22 THE TRANSFORMATION 

always respected Helen, and do still. But for 
real solid happiness all to ourselves, give me Kate 
every time. So don't worry. Mother. It will all 
come out right in the end, and you will come to 
see these things as I do. 

As for the Y. M. C. A. and that sort of thing 
which you inquire about, to tell the truth I have n't 
been much lately. Between foot-ball and society 
my time has been pretty well taken up. I believe 
in having a good time, and letting everybody else 
have the same ; I believe in father's version of the 
Golden Rule, which is, you know, " Do to others 
as you think they would do to you if they had a 
chance." I don't see why we should try to cast our 
lives in the narrow and contracted grooves marked 
out for us in primitive times, when the world was 
just emerging from barbarism. 

I recognize, of course, that life, like every game, 
has its rules, which you must obey if you want to 
get any fun out of it. But it strikes me that for 
the rules of life you must go to the men who have 
studied life from its first beginnings in plant and 
animal up to its latest development in the modern 
man. Mill and Spencer, Huxley and Tyndall, 
ought to be better authorities on the rules of this 
game than the ingenious priests who relieved the 
monotony of exile by drawing up an ideal code and 
attributing it to Moses ; men on whose minds the 
first principles of the synthetic philosophy had never 



OP THE UNDERGRADUATE 23 

dawned, and who had no more conception of the 
conditions which evolution has brought about in our 
day than the man in the moon. 

Now, I mean to do my best, as soon as I get 
time, to find out what the rules of life are accord- 
ing to the most approved modern authorities ; and 
then to play the game of life as I do the game of 
foot-ball, fair and hard. I shall never cheat, never 
shirk, never be afraid. There 's my creed up to 
date. If there are any other rules delivered by 
competent authority, and accepted by all players of 
good standing, I shall obey them too. 

So don't be anxious about my religious condition. 
If you don't like my creed, my practice is aU right. 
I have n't done anything I would be ashamed to 
have you know; except a little foolishness that 
doesn't amount to anything, and isn't worth men- 
tioning. And as long as I honestly try to do as 
you would have me, I can't go far astray. 

Your affectionate 

Clakence. 

junior misgivings 

Bradford College, October 14, 1903. 

My dear Mother, — Well, you were right, after 
all. My affair with Kate is off ; and my only re- 
gret is that it was ever on. She is a sweet crea- 
ture, and I am sorry to have caused her pain. But 
she is light-hearted, and she will soon get over it. 



24 THE TRANSFORMATION 

Slie was in love with being in love, in love with 
the good times I gave her, never in love with me. 
We never really eared for the same things. That 
whirl of gayety she likes to live in would be fear- 
fully sickening to me if I had to have it long. We 
were not happy together, unless we were going 
somewhere, or had some excitement or other on 
hand. She will not long remain inconsolable. 

Of course I shall come in for a liberal amount 
of criticism at the sewing circles and afternoon teas, 
and the women's club. I know I have done wrong, 
but I did n't mean to. And really it is n't as bad as 
it looks. We never were engaged, though people 
may have thought we were. That I have made the 
biggest kind of a fool of myself, I must of course 
acknowledge. 

One thing is sure. I shall have nothing more to 
do with young ladies. I am going to give my en- 
tire attention to my studies. The great economic 
and social questions that are pressing for solution 
demand the undivided attention of every serious 
man. I am coming to feel more and more as though 
my mission in life might lie in that direction. Once 
in the thick of the fight for economic justice and 
social equality, I shall have little time to think of 
private domestic happiness. I shall never marry. 
AH petty personal pleasures must be cast aside as 
cumbersome impediments by one who will serve 
the cause of the poor and the oppressed. You, dear 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 25 

Mother, will be henceforth my only feminine con- 
fidant and counselor. 

As for those religious matters which seem to be 
your main concern, I am afraid I can't give you 
much satisfaction. I have discovered that the rules 
of the great game of life are not so simple as I at 
first supposed. I see at last what you mean by your 
doctrine of seM-sacrifice. In base-ball we often have 
to make what we call a sacrifice hit, which brings 
in another runner while the batter himself gets put 
out. Then, too, the question sometimes comes up 
whether to try for a very hard ball, and take ten 
chances to one of making an error and spoiling 
your individual record ; or only pretend to try and 
miss it, and so save your individual record at the 
expense perhaps of losing the game. Essentially 
the same principle comes out in all our games. In 
hare and hounds the hares run over the most diffi- 
cult and devious course they can find, dropping 
pieces of paper behind them at intervals for scent. 
Then the hounds come after them on this trail. All 
goes weU as long as the trail is clear and the scent 
is good. Then we come to a point where all scent 
stops. Then the lazy shirks sit down and wait, while 
the energetic fellows strike out in all directions, 
until one of them finds the trail. He shouts to the 
others, and they all follow him. Now, this willing- 
ness to strike out and help find the trail for the 
rest, instead of sitting down and resting and letting 



26 THE TRANSFORMATION 

some one else do it, is, I suppose, what you mean 
by self-sacrifice. Now, I accept all that. But it 
seems to me that the sacrifices demanded in real life 
are not stereotyped, cut-and-dried forms of tradi- 
tional self-denial. Life is just like the game. So- 
ciety is all the time being brought up short at places 
where it is impossible to tell which of several pos- 
sible courses it is best to pursue. Then we need 
men who are not afraid to strike out and find a way, 
where no sure way appears. Then we need men 
who have the courage to make necessary mistakes. 

Now, this willingness to take on one's self the 
risk and responsibilities of leadership in matters 
which are still uncertain seems to me to be the very 
essence of the heroism modern society requires. If 
there is any type of men I hate, it is the stupid, timid 
conservatives, who stand still or turn back whenever 
they come to a novel problem or a hard place ; and 
then boast that they never go astray. Of course 
they don't. But, on the other hand, they never help 
anybody to find the way ; they are not leaders. 

Now, I gladly admit that Jesus taught the world 
once for all the great lesson of this self-devotion 
of the individual to the service of society. While 
others had anticipated special aspects and applica- 
tions of this principle, he made it central and su- 
preme. In doing so he became the Lord and Mas- 
ter of all who are willing to become humble servants 
of their fellow-men. 1 acknowledge him as my Lord 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 27 

and Master ; and that, too, in a much profounder 
sense than I ever supposed the words could mean. 
I do not, however, find much of this which I regard 
as the essence of Christ's teaching and spirit, either 
in traditional theology or conventional Christianity. 
Orthodox theology seems to have been built up 
around the idea of saving the merely individual 
soul, while Christ's prime concern was to show men 
how to lose that selfish sort of soul. 

In short, I propose to tackle the most pressing 
problem of the present day, that of the just dis- 
tribution of the products of human toil ; and I pro- 
pose to give my time and talents and to throw away 
my wealth and position, for the sake of contribut- 
ing what I can to its solution. That is what, as I 
conceive it, Jesus would do were he in my place 
to-day. Now, if leaving all and following Jesus is 
Christianity, I am and mean to be a Christian. But 
if you insist on the ecclesiastical definition of the 
term, then I am not a Christian, and probably never 
shall be. Whatever I am, I shall always be 
Your obedient and devoted son, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

Bradford College, January 26, 1904. 

My dear Nellie, — So you have made up your 
mind to go into a college settlement. Well, I con- 
gratulate you. Still, I don't quite like it. To be 
sure, it is a good thing in itself, but it does n't seem 



28 THE TRANSFORMATION 

to me that it is the best thing for you. If I had 
the disposition of your fate I think I could find 
something better than that for you. With your 
gentle, sensitive nature, it has always seemed to me 
that you were better fitted to make some one man 
happy and some one home sweet and beautiful than 
to go into the wholesale benevolent business. How- 
ever, I ought not to find fault, for I am thinking 
seriously of doing something very much like that 
myself. Instead of trying to relieve here and there 
a few cases of misery and degradation, as promis- 
cuous charity tries to do, and instead of trying to 
elevate the tone of this, that, and the other plague 
spot in the social system, as the settlement does, 
I mean to strike at the root of the whole evil and 
try to remove the causes of which all these notori- 
ous evils you refer to are the corollaries and effects. 

In other words, I intend to devote my life to the 
cause of labor, and to the prosecution of such re- 
forms as may be necessary to secure for labor its 
just share of the wealth which it produces. 

I will not weary you with a lengthy account of 
all the details of my programme. In fact, they are 
not very clear in my own mind yet. 

I have expected to find myself a lonely and re- 
jected social outcast in consequence of the adop- 
tion of these views and devotion to this work. But 
knowing that you feel the evils of the existing order 
as keenly as I do, and are to devote your life to 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 29 

binding up the wounds they cause, as I am to devote 
mine to finding a substitute for the cruel competi- 
tion which does the cutting, I feel renewed comfort 
and confidence and courage in my undertaking. 
Assured of your sympathy and appreciation, I shall 
not mind what the rest of the world may say. 
Even if we do not see each other often, our work 
will be in common for the same great ends. And 
while I am struggling to secure for the bread-win- 
ner a larger portion of the product of his toil, you 
will be teaching the wife and daughters how to 
make better use of their increased earnings. 

I may as well confess that I had begun to cher- 
ish the hope of a closer union ; but it seems that the 
call for renunciation of private happiness has come 
to us both alike, and I suppose we must be content to 
lose all thought of individual happiness in the con- 
sciousness of devotion to a common cause. I cannot 
, tell you how great a support even this connection 
with you is to me. It is so much so that I am 
sometimes afraid it is the desire to be in sympathy 
with you, quite as much as my own consecration to 
the cause, that has led me to renounce my opportu- 
nity for worldly success, and enlist in this crusade 
in behaK of the poor and the oppressed. Still I 
shall endeavor to serve the cause for its own sake, 
for I know no other motive for it would find favor 
in your eyes. 

In the earnest hope that I may be found worthy 



30 THE TRANSFORMATION 

to be your humble co-worker in this glorious cause, 
I am Most sincerely yours, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

Bradford College, February 22, 1904. 

My dear Father, — Your question as to what 
I am going to do when I get through college has 
set me to thinking. The more I think, the less I 
am able to answer it. The fact is, I am all stirred 
up and unsettled. College has raised a thousand 
questions, and thus far seems to have answered 
none. I am as much, yes, rather more of a Chris- 
tian than when I came here ; but the creed which 
I accepted then as a matter of course, now bristles 
with interrogation points, to say the least, on every 
side. So that the ministry is out of the question, 
even if I were adapted to it. I am not a book- 
worm, and so I stand no show for teaching. I am 
not a good debater; I should never do for law. 
For medicine I have not the slightest taste. I am 
afraid I never shall be good for anything. 

Business seems to be the only opening ; and 
yet I don't like to take that as a last resort. One 
ought to feel drawn toward that, if he is going into 
it, and not be driven to it like a slave. 

Besides, I am beginning to question whether there 
is any chance for an honest man in business now- 
adays. I have been reading a good deal of socialis- 
tic literature lately, and I am not sure that they 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 31 

may not be right, and the rest of ns all wrong. It 
does n't seem quite the fair thing that I should be 
here, living in idleness and comparative luxury, 
with a practical certainty of a competence all my 
days whether I do any work or not, while millions 
of my fellow-men are toiling for the bare necessities 
of a miserable subsistence. 

I can't see why, just because grandfather hap- 
pened to settle when the town was a wilderness on 
a farm which included the whole mill-privileges of 
the present city — I really can't see why we should 
be practically levying an assessment on every poor 
weaver with a big family of children, and every 
hard-worked woman with aged parents to support, 
that works in our mills or lives in our tenements. 

Then your joining the trust last year was the 
last straw on the breaking back of my lingering 
faith in the present industrial system. If a trust 
is n't robbery with both hands, forcing down the 
wages of the laborer, and putting up the price of 
goods to the consumer, I should like to know what 
is. Has not the thing a trust aims to accomplish, 
been forbidden by law ever since English law be- 
gan to be framed? Have not the legislatures of 
half our States passed enactments against it ? Is it 
not denounced on the platform and in the press as 
the most glaring injustice and iniquity of the pre- 
sent generation ? 

I know that you are scrupulously honest and up- 



32 THE TRANSFORMATION 

right ; and that you would not do anything unless 
you were first convinced of its justice. But I have 
come to look at these things in the light of abstract 
principles ; and in that light they stand before my 
mind convicted of injustice and condemned to be 
superseded by more equitable arrangements. Just 
what that better order is to be, I am not sure. Per- 
haps I am in the condition of a socialistic speaker 
I went to hear the other night, who in reply to a de- 
mand from the audience for a definite statement 
of his proposed remedies, replied, " We don't know 
what we want, but we want it right away, and we 
want it bad." Well, I must confess that these no- 
tions of mine have not been very clearly thought 
out. In the meantime I am unsettled, dissatisfied, 
miserable. And when I try to answer your question 
about my future work, I am made more conscious 
than ever of my wretched intellectual condition. So 
you must have patience with my heresies and my 
uncertainties ; and perhaps matters will clear up 
before the time for the final decision comes. 
Your affectionate son, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

senior prospects 

Bradford College, January 23, 1905. 

My dear Father, — I have at last made up my 
mind what I shall do after graduation, and make 
haste to tell you first of all. I am going into the mills 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 33 

with you. I shall make manufacturing my business ; 
and what time I can spare from business I shall 
give to politics. 

A good stiff course of political economy for the 
past year and a half has entirely knocked out of 
me those crude notions about the inherent wicked- 
ness of capital, the tyranny of ability, and the sole 
and exclusive claim of labor to divide among its 
own hands the entire joint product of the three 
great agencies. What you told me, too, about your 
running at a loss during these hard times, has 
thrown a new light on the matter. I fully appre- 
ciate the force of your remark that the problem of 
industry is not how to divide the spoils, but how to 
distribute responsibility. I have also gotten over 
my horror of the trust. I recognize that the in- 
creased efficiency of machinery, the cheapening of 
transportation, the swift transmission of intelli- 
gence, the factory system, the massing of popula- 
tion in cities, the concentration of capital in large 
corporations with extensive plants and enormous 
fixed charges, the competition of all relatively im- 
perishable and transportable products in one vast 
world-market have radically changed the conditions 
of production, and made old-fashioned small-scale 
production, and free competition between petty 
competitors, impossible. No, Father ; I don't think 
you are a robber-baron, because you have joined 
the trust. I begin to realize the tremendous pres- 



34 THE TRANSFORMATION 

sure a corporation is under when it must pay in- 
terest, keep up repairs, and meet fixed charges, and 
can come much nearer meeting these obligations 
by producing at a loss than by not producing at 
all. I see that the cutting of prices below cost by 
old concerns trying to get out of speculative com- 
plications, and by new concerns eager to get a footing 
in the market, makes effective combination an ab- 
solute necessity. I see that the trust is simply an 
effective way of doing what was ineffectively at- 
tempted by informal agreements as to trade customs, 
listings, quotations, and schedules of prices ; writ- 
ten agreements limiting output and fixing prices ; 
the appointment of common agents to market the 
product, and the like. I accept the trust as the 
stage of economic evolution which the world is now 
compelled to enter. 

So much for business. Now, as to politics. You 
say that if I am going into business I had better 
let politics alone. I can't agree with you. What 
you say about the difficulties, discouragements, and 
disadvantages of meddling with politics I know to 
be true. But I am not going into it for what I can 
get out of it, but for what I can put into it. You 
may be right in saying that I shall find it impos- 
sible in the cold, hard world of fact to make all my 
fine ideals real. Well, if I can't make the ideal real, 
I can at least do something toward making the 
real a little more ideal. 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 35 

Through a corrupt civil service, honeycombed 
with sinecures and loaded with incompetence; 
through valuable franchises, given away, or sold 
for a song, or bought by bribery ; through the 
sacrifice of efficient municipal administration to the 
supposed exigencies of national politics ; through 
discriminating legislation, wasteful expenditure, and 
unnecessary taxation; through the universal fail- 
ure to find a satisfactory method of dealing with 
the liquor problem, the poor man is squeezed, and 
gouged, and plundered by idle office-holders, and 
fat contractors, and favored corporations, and sleek 
saloon-keepers, and bribe-taking bosses, and un- 
righteous rings. 

I am going into politics to fight these concrete 
evils. I am not going to try to do the working- 
man's work for him. I don't believe he really wants 
anybody to do that. And I am sure that it would 
be the worst thing that could happen to him, if he 
did. But I am going to try to give him a chance 
to do his work under fair conditions ; and make it 
impossible for pensioners or politicians, directly or 
indirectly, to take a penny of his hard earnings 
from him without giving him a penny's worth of 
commodities or services in return. And as for trusts 
and corporations which derive their existence and 
protection from the State, I propose to do my ut- 
most to enforce on them publicity, and the respon- 
sibility that goes therewith. I would have their 



36 THE TRANSFORMATION 

books open to the best expert accountants the State 
could employ ; and I would have some way of find- 
ing out how much of the vast saving in production 
these enormous aggregations of capital undoubtedly 
effect goes to the proprietors, and how much goes 
to the community. 

There, Father, you have my programme : Through 
business to earn an honest living for myseK, and 
through politics to help every other man to a fair 
chance to do the same. 

In these ways, my views on the relations of 
capital and labor have undergone a pretty radical 
change. I could not teU you the whole story in a 
letter. But suffice it to say : While I still believe 
that there are grave defects in the existing indus- 
trial system, and believe that there are many ways 
in which it might be improved, I see that such 
improvement must be a long, slow process of evo- 
lution, in which one defect after another must be 
sloughed off gradually, I see that such a desire to 
improve the system, and gradually to substitute 
better features in place of those which now exist, 
is not inconsistent with one's working practically 
under the system as it is. Indeed, I am convinced 
that the desired improvement must come, not 
through agitators, who seek to apply abstract prin- 
ciples from without, but through manufacturers 
and merchants, who understand the present system 
in its practical internal workings, and are thus able 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 37 

to develop the new out of the old. I believe that 
my proper place as a reformer is inside, not out- 
side, of the industrial system that is to be reformed. 
That is the extent of the socialism there is left 
in me. At the same time I feel that the strong 
dose of socialism I have taken during the past year 
or more has done me good. Unless I had been 
through this stage of striving to set all things 
right, I am afraid I should have settled down into 
the conventional ruts of the mere business man, 
who is content to make his own little pile in his 
own way, leaving society to take care of its own 
affairs. I am glad that my choice of business coin- 
cides with your long-cherished wishes ; and I hope 
that you will see that my political purposes are not 
altogether destitute of justice and sound sense. 
Your affectionate son, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

Bradford College, March 2, 1905. 

My dear Mother, — You already know, from 
my letter to Father, my final decision about a pro- 
fession. I am glad it pleases him, and my only 
regret is that it may not be equally acceptable 
to you. I know you hoped I should be a minis- 
ter, or at least a doctor or lawyer. I recognize the 
many attractive things about all these professions ; 
but I do not believe I was cut out for either of 
them. If you will pardon once more an illustration 



38 THE TRANSFORMATION 

from your chief abomination, tlie foot-ball field, I 
can show you how I feel about it. Business and 
politics seem to me like being actually in the game, 
playing it for all you are worth. The lawyer strikes 
me as a sort of umpire, to declare and apply the 
rules in case of fraud or foul play, or the member 
of the athletic committee who conducts the diplo- 
macy. The doctor strikes me as the fellow who 
stands along the side lines, ready to bind up the 
bruised heads and broken limbs. The journalist is 
the man who takes notes and writes it up afterward. 
The minister seems like the man who sits on the 
grand stand and explains the fine plays and errors 
to the ladies. My heart would not be in any of 
these things, and consequently I should not do 
either of them well. The studies of the last part 
of the course, now that they are elective, and one 
carries them far enough to really get into them, 
sift men out for the right professions, without their 
knowing when or how it happens. 

The fellows that take to biology, that are handy 
with the microtome and the microscope, go on into 
medicine as a matter of course. The fellows that 
get waked up in philosophy, and take the problems 
of the universe upon their shoulders, naturally go 
into the ministry. The men that take to history 
and political science are foreordained to law. Now, 
while I have been interested in three or four lines, 
my only genuine enthusiasm has been economics. 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 39 

Industry and commerce seem to me the basis on 
which everything else rests. I think that I can do 
more good as a business man and an active force 
in politics, with a successful business behind me, 
than in any other way. The business man and the 
politician seem to me to be dealing with the real 
things, while the professional men seem to be deal- 
ing only with the symbols of things. 

A man's vocation ought to be the expression of 
his ideal. My ideal is to be an effective member 
of the social order that now is, and an efficient pro- 
moter of the better social order that is to be. 

You complain that I do not say much about re- 
ligion nowadays. As I have told you often, religion 
is not to my mind an external form superimposed 
upon life from without, but is the informing spirit 
of life itself. In striving to do with my might the 
thing my fellow-men need most to have done for 
them, I feel that I am at the same time doing what 
is most acceptable to God, and most conformable 
to the teaching and example of Jesus Christ. 

At the same time I have gotten over that antipa- 
thy to religious institutions which I have had for 
a year or two. I have gone back to the Christian 
Association here in college ; and whether the change 
is in them or in me I don't know, but I find my- 
self able both to do good and to get good in their 
meetings. In fact, unless there were some such 
meeting-ground for the expression and cultivation 



40 THE TRANSFORMATION 

of our ideals, I don't see how they could be kept 
from fading out. It is a great help to feel that in 
spite of the diversity of taste, talent, and vocation, 
so many earnest fellows are going out into the world 
as sincere servants of the one God, followers of the 
one Lord, and workers in the one Spirit. 

I shall also connect myself actively with the 
Church. I do not profess to have solved all the 
problems of theology, and fortunately our Church 
does not require of laymen like me subscription to 
an elaborate creed. I see that the cry " Back to 
Jesus " in religion, is as foolish as the cry " Back 
to Phidias " in art, or " Back to Homer " in poetry. 

We cannot go back to primitive simplicity and 
naivete in any department of life. The subsequent 
development is part and parcel of our spiritual in- 
heritance, of which it is impossible to divest our- 
selves. The Church, as the organized, institutional 
expression of the life of the Spirit of God in the 
heart of humanity, I accept as a spiritual neces- 
sity. And I should no more think of trying to 
serve God and my fellow-men apart from it, than 
I should think of shouldering my individual mus- 
ket and marching across the fields on my own pri- 
vate account to defend my country against an in- 
vading army. Christian kindness. Christian justice, 
Christian civilization. Christian culture, the Chris- 
tian family, and above all a Christian mother like 
you, I believe in and love with all my heart. And 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 41 

now that the Church has come to represent to my 
mind, symbolically at least, all these most precious 
and beneficent influences that have entered into 
the structure of my character and life, I cannot 
do less than freely give my influence and support 
to the institution from which, indirectly if not di- 
rectly, I have freely received so much. 

So, my dear mother, if you will look beneath 
the outward form to the underlying spirit, I hope 
you will see that after all I am a good deal of a 
Christian ; and mean to be in my own way some- 
thing of a minister too. 

Your affectionate son, 

Clarence Mansfield. 

Bradford College, June 15, 1905. 

My dearest. Nell, — You shouldn't complain 
that my letters for the past six weeks have been 
all about you, and nothing about myself. How can 
a fellow help it, when you have made him the 
happiest being in the world ? Still, if you com- 
mand, I must obey, and begin the story of my 
poor self where I left off. Let 's see. Where was 
it ? It seems so long ago and so far away that I 
can scarce recall it. 

" How soon a smile of God can change the 
world ! " 

Oh ! I remember. The agreement was that you 
were to quit the role of St. Catherine, and conde- 



42 THE TRANSFORMATION 

scend to enter a home instead of a settlement ; and 
I was to abjure the vows of a St. Christopher to 
right at once all the wrongs of the universe by my 
own right arm, before entertaining the " thought 
of tender happiness." We were two precious fools, 
were n't we ? Yet it was a divine folly after all. 
Goethe is right in his doctrine of renunciation. If 
we had not faced fairly the giving up of all this 
bliss, it would not be half so sweet to us now. And 
please don't tell me I have " smashed at one blow 
all your long-cherished ideals of social service." 
It is not so. The substance of all those social aims 
of yours is as precious to us both as it ever was, 
and we will find ways to work them out together. 
Not one jot or tittle of the loftiest standard you 
ever set before yourself shall be suffered to pass 
away unfulfilled. Your aims and aspirations are 
not lost, but transformed, aufgehohen^ as the Ger- 
mans say of the chemical constituents of the soil 
when they are taken up to form the living tissue 
of plant or animal. 

There is nothing you ever thought of doing in a 
settlement that we will not do better in our home. 
We shall not give less to the world, because we are 
more ourselves. We shall not be less able to com- 
fort those who sorrow, because our own hearts 
overflow with joy. Because we are rich in each 
other, we shall not be less generous to all. You 
shall have aU the classes and schools and clubs and 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 43 

meetings you wish ; and they will not be the least 
bit less successful for being in the home of a mill- 
owner in our native city of fifty thousand people, 
instead of in some neglected quarter of a city ten 
times as big. 

Do you know, Father is so delighted with what 
he calls the " recovery of my reason," that he has 
promised to build a house for us this fall. We will 
work up the plans together this summer. One fea- 
ture of it, though, I have fixed on already, which 
I know you will approve. Our library will be a 
long room, with a big fireplace on one side and a 
cosy den at each end, marked off by an arch sup- 
ported by piUars. These dens we will fit up with 
our college books and furniture, and make them 
just as nearly like our college rooms as we can. 
And then in the long winter evenings we will come 
out of our dens before the fireplace ; and you wiU 
be my private tutor, and with your patient tuition 
I shall perhaps get some good after all out of the 
Horace and Goethe and Shelley and Browning, 
which you understand and love so well ; but which, 
to tell the truth, I have n't got much out of thus 
far. Somehow we fellows don't get hold of those 
things as you do. 

Is n't it glorious that my examinations come so 
that I can get off for your class day and com- 
mencement ! To be sure, I shall probably forget 
the fine points in political economy and sociology. 



44 THE TRANSFORMATION 

in which I have been working for honors the past 
two years. But then, honors or no honors, I have 
got the good out of them anyway ; and what are 
honors at the end of college compared with love at 
the beginning of life ? 

I am delighted that you are coming to my com- 
mencement. My part is a dry, heavy thing, which 
I don't expect to make interesting to anybody else ; 
but it is intensely interesting to me, for it sums 
up the inner experience which I have been going 
through these past four years, and has helped to 
give me my bearings as I go out into life. My 
subject is, " Naturalness, Selfishness, Self-sacrifice, 
and Self-realization." You who have known me as 
no one else has all these years, you will see what 
it all means. You catch the idea. 

First : We set out as nature has formed and 
tradition has fashioned us ; innocent, susceptible, 
frail. The hard, cruel world comes down upon us, 
and would crush us under its heavy unintelligible 
weight. 

Second : We rise up against it, defy tradition 
and throw convention to the winds. We in turn 
strive to trample others under foot. But though 
we wear spiked shoes, we find the pricks we kick 
against harder and sharper than our spikes. 

Third: We surrender, abjectly and uncondi- 
tionally ; cast spear and shield away in the extreme 
of formal, abstract self-denial, and ascetic, egotis- 



OF THE UNDERGRADUATE 45 

tical self-sacrifice. This in turn betrays its hoUow- 
ness and emptiness and uselessness and unreality. 

Fourth : The Lord of life, against whom we 've 
been blindly fighting all the while, lifts us up in his 
strong arms ; sets us about the concrete duties of 
our station ; arms us with the strength of definite 
human duties, and cheers us with the warmth of 
individual human love ; and sends us forth to the 
social service which to hearts thus fortified is per- 
fect freedom and perennial delight. 

Such a process of spiritual transformation I 
take to be the true significance of a college course. 
To be sure in college, as in the great world of 
which it is a part, none see the meaning of the 
earlier phases until they reach the later ; and con- 
sequently many never see any sense in it at all. 
For the great majority of men go through college, 
as the great majority go through life, without get- 
ting beyond the first or second stage, and graduate 
as Matthew Arnold says most men die, " Unf reed, 
having seen nothing, still unblest." 

There, Nell, have n't I been as egoistic this time 
as your altruistic highness could desire ? 
Your devoted lover, 

Clarence Mansfield. 



Ill 

Greek Qualities in the College Man 

WHETHEK in Cuba or in the Klondike, in 
camp or in college, wherever men live to- 
gether in close quarters, there they form a moral 
code. 

The codes of college students, like the codes of 
mining camps, are couched in grotesque, slangy 
terms ; but the heart of them is sure to be sound. 

For the strictly limited purposes of a college code 
— that is, for healthy, wealthy young fellows who 
have no immediate concern about earning their liv- 
ing, and who are free from domestic, business, and 
political responsibilities — these college codes serve 
fairly well. That our college youth, in entire un- 
consciousness of what they are doing, and without 
the remotest intention of drawing up a moral code, 
come to a tacit acceptance of principles so profound, 
so searching, and so comprehensive, is a magnificent 
witness to the soundness of young men's ethical 
insight. 

The Greeks worked out an ethical code for them- 
selves in as direct a contact with actual social needs 
as is felt by our miners and soldiers and ranchmen 
and college students. Though there were many 



GREEK QUALITIES 47 

points which their code did not cover, yet it was 
much broader than any of these special codes which 
are being developed to-day, and with adequate am- 
plification can be made to include the whole social 
duty of man. Their ethical efforts came to so little, 
not from lack of insight so much as from lack of 
motive. To unite the ethical insight of the Greek 
with the spiritual motive of the Christian would be 
the salvation of individual or country or race. 

If we are to see Kf e with the eyes of the Greeks, 
we must first free our minds of the notion that any- 
thing in the world, any appetite or passion of man, 
is either good or bad in itself. Life would be simple 
indeed if only some things, like eating and studying 
and working and saving and giving, were absolutely 
good ; and other things, like drinking and smoking 
and spending and theatre-going and dancing and 
sexual love, were absolutely bad. To be sure, men 
and schools and churches have often tried to dissect 
life into these two halves ; but it never works weU. 
Material things and natural appetites are in them- 
selves neither good nor bad; they become good 
when rightly related, and bad when wrongly related. 

WISDOM IN INVESTMENT 

The first Greek virtue is wisdom. Wisdom, in 
the ethical sense of the term, is a very different 
thing from book-learning. Illiterate people are fre- 
quently exceedingly wise, while learned people are 



48 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

often the biggest fools. Wisdom is the sense of 
proportion — the power to see clearly one's ends, 
and their relative worth ; to subordinate lower ends 
to higher without sacrificing the lower altogether ; 
and to select the appropriate means to one's ends, 
taking just so much of the means as will best serve 
the ends, — no more and no less. It is neither the 
gratification nor the suppression of appetite and 
passion as such, but the organization of them into 
a hierarchy of ends which they are sternly compelled 
to subserve. 

Of the many ends at which a wise man aims, 
such as health, wealth, reputation, power, culture, 
and the like, a single subordinate phase of a single 
end, the investment of savings, will bring out the 
essential feature of wisdom. Now, the end at which 
a man aims in investment of savings is provision 
for himself and his family in old age. It is the part 
of wisdom to keep that end constantly before the 
mind — not allowing other ends to be substituted 
for it ; and to choose the means which strictly sub- 
serve that end — not the means which are attractive 
in themselves, or promise to serve some other end. 
Yet simple as this matter is, not one investor of 
savings in twenty has the wisdom to do it. 

Investment of savings is an entirely different 
thing from the investment a merchant or manufac- 
turer makes for purposes of profit ; and to keep 
this distinction clear is one of the greatest signs of 



THE COLLEGE MAN 49 

practical wisdom. The prime consideration in in- 
vestment of savings should be security. The wise 
investor of savings will remember two principles : 
first, high interest is another name for poor security ; 
second, large profits is another name for extreme 
risk. He will confine his investment to building 
and loan associations, savings banks, government 
and conservative municipal bonds, real estate ; first 
mortgages on real estate worth twice the face of the 
mortgage, which is producing income considerably 
in excess of the interest on the mortgage, and is 
owned by some one who has other property besides 
that on which the mortgage is held ; and finally, 
local companies which serve essential local needs, 
like light, water, and transportation, provided they 
are honestly and economically managed. These, in 
about the order named, are the only safe and there- 
fore the only wise forms of investment for savings. 
The expert banker and financier may seek larger 
profits where he pleases ; but the man who puts his 
savings, be they small or large, on which he relies 
for old age, into any forms of investment more 
risky than these is a fool. There is nothing more 
pitiful than to see men and women, who have 
worked hard and lived close year after year, flat- 
tered and wheedled into putting their savings into 
some specious scheme which promises six or eight 
per cent interest, or the chance in a few years to 
double their money, and then fails altogether just 



50 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

when the money they have saved is most needed, 
and the power to earn wages or salary has gone. 

To sum up the dictates of wisdom on this point 
in a few simple rules, wisdom says: "Avoid high 
rates of interest ; seek no business profits beyond 
the range of your own immediate and expert obser- 
vation ; lend money as a favor to no one, unless 
you are able and willing, if need be, to give the 
money outright ; have no business dealings with 
your relatives in which business and sentiment are 
mixed up ; sign no notes and assume no financial 
responsibilities for other people ; keep your money 
where you can watch the men who manage it for 
you ; never put a large part of your savings into 
any one investment." He who keeps these rules 
may not grow suddenly rich, but he wiU never be- 
come suddenly and sorrowfully poor. 

This simple yet very practical example may serve 
as the type of all wisdom. It simply demands that 
we be perfectly clear about our ends, and the part 
they play in our permanent plan of life ; and then, 
that we never leave or forsake these chosen ends 
to chase after others which circumstance or flattery 
or vanity or indolence or ambition may chance to 
suggest. 

JUSTICE AND MODERN STEALING 

If man dwelt alone in the world of things, wis- 
dom to subordinate things to his ends would be 



THE COLLEGE MAN 51 

the principal virtue. The form o£ the perfect char- 
acter would be a circle, with self as the centre. 
The fact that we live in a social world, where other 
persons must be recognized, is the ground of jus- 
tice, the second Greek virtue. Justice requires the 
subordination of the interests of the individual 
to the interests of society, and the persons who 
constitute society, in the same way that wisdom 
requires the subordination of particular desires to 
the permanent interests of the whole individual to 
whom they belong. For the individual is a part of 
society in the same vital way in which a single de- 
sire is part of an individual. To indulge a single 
desire at the expense of the permanent self is folly ; 
and to indulge a single individual, whether myself 
or another, at the expense of society is injustice. 

The essence of injustice consists in treating peo- 
ple, not as persons, having interests and ends of 
their own, but as mere tools or machines, to do the 
things we want to have done. The penalty of injus- 
tice is a hardening of heart and shriveling of soul ; 
so that if a person were to treat everybody in that 
way, he would come to dwell in a world of things, 
and, before he knew it, degenerate into a mere 
thing himself. Lord Rosebery points out that this 
habit of treating men as mere means to his own 
ends was what made Napoleon's mind lose its sanity 
of judgment, and made his heart the friendless, 
cheerless desolation that it was in his last days. 



52 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

We have aU seen persons in whom this harden- 
ing, shriveling, drying-up process had reached al- 
most the vanishing-point. The employer toward his 
" hands ; " the officer toward his troops ; the teacher, 
even, toward his scholars ; the housekeeper toward 
her servants ; all of us toward the people who cook 
our food, and make our beds, and sell our meat, 
and raise our vegetables, are in imminent danger of 
slipping down on to this immoral level of treating 
them as mere machines. Eoyce, in his " Religious 
Aspect of Philosophy," has set this forth most for- 
cibly among English writers ; though it lies at the 
heart of all German formulas, like Kant's " Treat 
humanity, whether in thyself or in others, always as 
an end, never as a means," and Hegel's " Be a per- 
son, and respect the personality of others." Eoyce 
says : " Let one look over the range of his bare 
acquaintanceship ; let him leave out his friends, and 
the people iri whom he takes a special personal in- 
terest ; let him regard the rest of his world of fel- 
low-men, — his butcher, his grocer, the policeman 
that patrols his street, the newsboy, the servant in 
his kitchen, his business rivals. Are they not one 
and all to him ways of behavior toward himself or 
other people, outwardly effective beings, rather than 
realized masses of genuine inner sentiment, of love, 
or of felt desire ? Does he not naturally think of 
each of them rather as a way of outward action than 
as a way of inner volition ? His butcher, his news- 



THE COLLEGE MAN 53 

boy, his servant, — are they not for him industrious 
or lazy, honest or deceitful, polite or uncivil, useful 
or useless people, rather than self-conscious people ? 
Is any one of these alive for him in the full sense, 
— sentient, emotional, and otherwise like himself, 
as perhaps his own son, or his own mother or wife, 
seems to him to be ? Is it not rather their being for 
him, not for themselves, that he considers in all his 
ordinary life ? Not their inner volitional nature is 
realized, but their manner of outward activity. 
Such is the nature and ground of the illusion of 
selfishness." 

This passage from Royce lays bare the source of 
the greater part of the social immorality in the 
world, and accounts for nine tenths of all the world's 
trouble. 

What wonder that a man of this type cannot 
succeed in any large work of administration ! He 
treats men as things. But men are not things. 
They rise up in indignation against him. Every 
man of them is instantly his enemy, and will take 
the first chance that occurs to betray him and cast 
him down. A man of that* type cannot run a mill 
or a store or a school or a political campaign or a 
hotel a week without being in a row. He cannot live 
in a community six weeks without having made more 
enemies than friends. The first time he trips, every 
one is ready to jump on him. And in all his trouble 
and unpopularity, and failure and defeat, the beauty 



54 GEEEK QUALITIES IN 

of it is that he is getting precisely what he deserves, 
and we all exclaim, " It 's good enough for him ! " 
Selfishness is closely akin to folly. The fool treats 
things as if they were mere qualities, and had no 
permanent effect. But the effects come back to 
plague and torment him. The selfish man treats 
men as if they were mere acts, and had no perma- 
nent selves. He may at the time get out of them 
the act he wants, but in doing so he makes them 
his enemies ; and no man can permanently prosper 
with every other man openly or secretly arrayed 
against him. The most fundamental question a man 
can ask about our character is whether and to what 
extent we habitually treat persons as persons, and 
not as things. The answer to that question will tell 
us whether we shall succeed or fail in any enterprise 
which has an important social side ; will tell whether 
we shall make a home happy or wretched ; will tell 
whether we are more of a blessing or a curse to the 
world in which we move. And the test is to be 
found, not in our attitude toward the people whom 
we consider our superiors and equals ; not in the 
appearance we make in what is technically called 
society. There we have to be decent, whether we 
want to or not ; there we have to treat, or appear 
to treat, persons as persons, not as things. Little 
credit belongs to us for all that. But when it comes 
to our relations with the people of whom Eoyce was 
speaking, there we seem to be under no such social 



THE COLLEGE MAN 55 

compulsion. There our real character gets blurted 
out. How do we think and feel and speak and act 
toward our washerwoman or the man who does our 
humblest work for us ? That determines whether 
we are at heart Christians or barbarians, whether a 
gentleman or a brute sits on the throne of our soul. 
For whether a fellow-man is ever a means instead 
of an end, whether the personality of the humblest 
ever fails to win our recognition, inasmuch as we 
do it or do it not unto the least of our breth- 
ren, determines our moral and social status, as the 
men of insight, like Kant and Hegel and Jesus, 
define it. 

One of the most important forms of justice is 
honesty in services and material goods. To be hon- 
est means that we refuse to be partner to a trade 
or transaction in which we would not willingly 
accept its consequence to all parties, provided we 
were in their places. Any transaction that involves 
effects on another we would not willingly, under 
the circumstances, accept for ourselves, is fraud 
and robbery. The man who pilfers goods from a 
pocket or a counter is the least of the thieves of 
to-day. He is only doing, in a pitiful way, the 
devil's retail business. The men who do his whole- 
sale business often move in the best of society, 
and are even the makers and executors of our laws. 
Wholesale stealing has numerous forms, but it is 
nearly all reducible to two well-marked types. 



56 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

First, stealing is carried on by issuing repre- 
sentations of what does not exist as represented. 
Stealing of this sort is really lying. Adulteration 
of goods, watered stock, false accounts, are the 
grosser forms of this stealing. The more adroit 
of these rascals, however, take to the promotion 
of spurious enterprises. They form a company to 
work a mine which has ore, but which they know 
cannot be worked at a profit ; or they build a rail- 
road between points where there is not traffic or 
travel enough to pay a fair rate of interest on the 
capital invested. They appropriate to themselves 
a generous block of the stock as the price for 
their work of organization. They put in the most 
expensive plant and equipment. For the first few 
months, when there are no repairs needed, by arti- 
ficial stimulus and by various devices of book- 
keeping, or by leaving some bills unpaid, they 
make a showing on paper of large earnings above 
running expenses. On this fictitious showing they 
sell their stock to investors at a distance, who 
think they are being specially favored in being let 
into a chance to earn dividends of ten per cent. 
Then comes the crash ; the poor fools that in- 
vested in the stock find it worthless, and even the 
bonds which represent its construction fall below 
par. Then the poor robbed, cheated, deluded in- 
vestors look to the promoter for redress ; and lo ! 
he has unloaded his stock, and is planning another 



THE COLLEGE MAN 57 

mine in inaccessible Tennessee mountains, or sell- 
ing lumber that no team can haul out of some 
impenetrable Florida swamp, or booming city lots 
staked out on some unbroken Kansas prairie, or 
running an electric railroad through the pastures 
and woodlands that connect out-of-the-way hamlets 
in Maine. Justice and honesty demand that we 
shall read that man's character in the light of the 
losses he inflicts on hard-working farmers, depend- 
ent widows, poor men and women who have toiled 
all their lives, and are looking for rest in old age. 
In that clear light of consequence to their fellows, 
the acts of these unscrupulous promoters stand 
out in their naked hideousness and deformity. The 
man w^ho promotes a scheme of this kind, know- 
ing or having good reason to believe that his gain 
is represented by widespread robbery of the inno- 
cent, and plunder of the unprotected, is a thief 
and a robber ; and the place where he belongs 
is at hard work iu striped clothes, by the side of 
the defaulter, the burglar, and the picker of pock- 
ets. The fact that he does not get there, but fares 
sumptuously in a palace he rears with his ill-gotten 
gain, is one of the chief reasons why men still be- 
lieve and hope there is a hell. 

The other type of steaHng which flourishes in 
modern conditions is the misuse of one's repre- 
sentative or delegated influence. A thief of this 
sort uses his position in one corporation to let 



58 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

favorable contracts to himself in another corpo- 
ration in which he is directly or indirectly con- 
cerned. He uses his position as purchasing or sell- 
ing agent for a company by which he is employed, 
to induce the seller or buyer to make a special 
rebate or bonus to him in his private capacity; 
thus charging his employer with an unrecognized 
salary in addition to the one he is supposed to 
receive. He uses his political influence to promote 
his personal fortunes, or those of his friends and 
retainers, at the public expense. Wherever a repre- 
sentative or delegated power is used for personal, 
private, friendly, family, or any ends whatever other 
than the single interests of the constituents or firm 
or institution represented, there is a case of whole- 
sale stealing of the second type. 

Opportunities for the successful practice of these 
two types of wholesale stealing are incidental to 
our highly complex political and industrial life. 
Exceptional talent and industry and enterprise may 
Still manage to make money without them. But 
most of the great fortunes which are rapidly made 
rest on one or the other of these two types of theft. 
The temptations to resort to them in these days 
are tremendous. Yet it is no new discovery that 
wrongdoing is profitable and easy, while virtue is 
costly and hard. The first step toward righteous- 
ness in these matters is to define clearly, in modern 
terms, what honesty is ; and to brand all whose 



THE COLLEGE MAN 59 

gains rest on the losses of others as the thieves and 
villains they are. 

Justice, if left to the feeble hands of individuals, 
would be but poorly executed, even if the indi- 
viduals concerned were most justly and generously 
disposed. It is through institutions that justice 
most effectively works. Loyalty to institutions is 
a higher and more universal form of justice. 

Loyalty to the family involves the recognition 
that the family is prior to the individual. Into the 
family we are born ; by our parents we are trained 
and reared ; from parents, brothers, and sisters we 
first learn life's most precious lesson of love. The 
loyal son must ever hold the family as a dearer 
and better self. Its interest must be his interest; 
its requirements, his will ; its members, members 
of himself, to be honored, cherished, defended, sup- 
ported, so long as he has strength and means to 
support them, heart and soul wherewith to love. 

Loyalty to one's own home carries with it, as 
its counterpart, a respect for the home and family 
life of others. Chastity is the great virtue that 
guards the sanctity of the home. Approached from 
the point of view of the family and the home, chas- 
tity is one of the most reasonable and imperative 
requirements which justice and loyalty lay upon 
men. To the libertine justice puts the searching 
questions : " How would you like to have been born 
as the product of the passing passion of a man who 



60 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

was too mean to acknowledge either you or your 
mother? How would you like to have your own 
sisters treated in that way? How would you like 
to look forward to rearing your own daughters for 
the brief, bitter life of the brothel?" These are 
hard questions, no doubt, the very suggestion of 
which gives one a feeling of horror. But just those 
questions the libertine must answer before he can 
ever think guiltlessly of a licentious life for him- 
self. For these wretched women whom he meets 
on the street after nightfall, or goes to a brothel 
to find, were once the dear daughters and sisters 
of fond fathers and mothers and brothers ; and 
God meant them to be the happy wives of good 
husbands, fond mothers of sweet children to grow 
up and honor and love them in turn. To lead one 
such woman astray, or to patronize an institution 
which ruins such women by the wholesale, is to be 
a traitor to the great and blessed institution of 
home ; to make impossible for others that pure, 
sweet family life to which we owe all that is best 
in our own lives, and which holds in its beneficent 
keeping all the best gifts we can hope to hand 
down to our children. Chastity is no mere con- 
ventional virtue, which a young man may lightly 
ignore, under some such pretext as " sowing wild 
oats." It is rooted and grounded in justice to 
others, and loyalty to the benign institution of 
home. 



THE COLLEGE MAN 61 

THE COURAGE OF SPACE AND TIME 

If man were merely a mind, wisdom to see par- 
ticular desires in the light of their permanent con- 
sequences to self, and justice to weigh the interests 
of self to the impartial scales of a due regard for 
the interests of others, would together sum up all 
virtue. Knowledge, in these two forms, would be 
virtue, as Socrates taught. 

We feel, however, as well as know. Nature, for 
purposes of her own, has placed the premium of 
pleasure on the exercise of function, and attached 
the penalty of pain to both privation of such exer- 
cise, on the one hand, and over-exertion, on the 
other. Nature, too, has adjusted the scale of in- 
tensity of pleasures and pains to her own ends ; 
placing the keenest rewards and the severest penal- 
ties on those appetites which, like nutrition and 
reproduction, are most essential to the survival of 
the individual and the race ; thus enforcing by her 
rough process of natural selection a crude wisdom 
and justice of her own. Moreover, these premiums 
and penalties were adjusted to the needs of the 
race at a stage of evolution when scanty and pre- 
carious food-supply and a high death-rate, due to 
the combined inroads of war, famine, and pesti- 
lence, rendered nutrition and reproduction of vastly 
more relative urgency, in comparison with other 
interests, than they are to-day. 



62 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

Pleasure and pain, therefore, though reliable 
guides in the life of an animal struggling for exist- 
ence, are not reliable guides for men in times of 
artificial plenty and elaborate civilization. To fol- 
low the strongest appetites, to seek the intensest 
pleasures and shun the sharpest pains, is simply to 
revert to a lower stage of evolution, and live the 
life of a beast. Hence that combat of the moral 
nature with the cosmic process to which Mr. Hux- 
ley recently recalled our attention ; or rather, that 
combat of man with himself which Paul and Au- 
gustine, Plato and Hegel have more profoundly 
expressed. This fact that Nature's premiums and 
penalties are distributed on an entirely different 
principle from that which wisdom and justice mark 
out for the civilized man renders it necessary for 
wisdom and justice to summon to their aid two 
subordinate virtues, courage and temperance, — 
courage to endure the pains which the pursuit of 
wisdom and justice involves ; temperance to cut 
off the pleasures which are inconsistent with the 
ends which wisdom and justice set before us. 

The wide, permanent ends at which justice and 
wisdom aim often involve what is in itself, and for 
the present, disagreeable and painful. The acqui- 
sition of a competence involves hard work, when 
Nature calls for rest; the solution of a problem 
requires us to be wide awake, when Nature urges 
sleep ; the advocacy of a reform involves unpop- 



THE COLLEGE MAN 63 

ularity, when Nature suggests the advantages of 
having the good opinion of our fellows ; the life of 
the country calls for the death of the soldier, when 
Nature bids him chng to life by running away. 

Now, since we are not ascetics, we must admit 
that per se pleasure is preferable to pain. If it 
were a question between rest and work when weary, 
between sleep and waking when tired out, between 
popularity and unpopularity, between life and 
death, every sensible man would choose the first 
alternatives as a matter of course. Wisdom and 
justice, however, see the present and partial pain 
as part of a wider personal and social good, and 
order that the pain be endured. True courage, 
therefore, is simply the executor of the orders of 
wisdom and justice. The wise and just man, who 
knows what he wants, and is bound to get it at all 
costs, is the only man who can be truly brave. For 
the strength of one's courage is simply the strength 
of the wise and just aims which he holds. All 
bravery not thus rooted and grounded in the vision 
of some larger end to be gained is mere bravado 
and bluster. 

Of the many applications of courage, two of 
the simplest will suffice for illustration : the cour- 
age of space, to take the pains to keep things in 
order ; and the courage of time, to be punctual, or 
even ahead of the hour, when a hard task has to 
be done. 



64 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

Even if our life is a small, sheltered one, even 
if we have only our house or rooms to look after, 
things tend to get out of order, to pile themselves 
up in heaps, to get out of our reach and into each 
other's way. To leave things in this chaos is both 
unwise and unjust ; for it will trouble us in the 
future, and trouble the people who have to live 
with us. Yet it costs pain and effort to attack this 
chaos and subject it to order. Endurance of pain, 
in the name of wisdom and justice, to secure order 
for our own future comfort and the comfort of our 
family and friends, is courage. On the other hand, 
to leave things lying in confusion around us ; to 
let alien forces come into our domain and encamp 
there in insolent defiance of ourselves and our 
friends, is a shameful confession that things are 
stronger than we. To be thus conquered by dead 
material things is as ignominious a defeat as can 
come to a man. The man who can be conquered 
by things is a coward in the strict ethical sense of 
the term ; that is, he lacks the strength of will to 
bear the incidental pains which his personal and 
social interests put upon him. 

The courage of time is punctuality. When there 
is a hard piece of work to be done, it is pleasanter 
far to sit at ease for the present, and put off the 
work. " The thousand nothings of the hour " claim 
our attention. The coward yields to " their stupe- 
fying power," and the great task remains forever 



THE COLLEGE MAN 65 

undone. The brave man brushes these conflicting 
claims into the background, stops his ears until the 
sirens' voices are silent, stamps on his feehngs as 
though they were snakes in his path, and does the 
thing now which ever after he will rejoice to have 
done. In these crowded modern days, the only 
man who " finds time " for great things is the man 
who takes it by violence from the thousands of 
petty, local, temporary claims, and makes it serve 
the ends of wisdom and justice. 

There are three places where one may draw the 
line for getting a piece of work done. One man 
draws it habitually a few minutes or hours or days 
after it is due. He is always in distress, and a 
nuisance to everybody else. There is no dignity 
in a life that is as perpetually behind its appoint- 
ments as a tail is in the rear of a dog. 

It is very risky — ethically speaking, it is cow- 
ardly — to draw the line at the exact date when 
the work is due ; for then one is at the mercy of 
any accident or interruption that may overtake 
him at the end of his allotted time. If he is sick or 
a friend dies, or imforeseen complications arise, he 
is as badly off as the man who deliberately planned 
to be late, and almost as much to blame. For a man 
who leaves the possibility of accident and interrup- 
tion out of account, and stakes the welfare of him- 
self and of others on such miscalculation, is neither 
wise nor just ; he is reckless rather than brave. 



66 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

Even if accidents do not come, he is walking on 
the perilous edge all the time ; his work is done in 
a fever of haste and anxiety, injurious alike to the 
quality of the work and the health of the worker. 

The man who puts the courage of punctuality 
into his work will draw the line for finishing a piece 
of work a safe period inside the time when it is 
actually due. If one forms the habit and sticks to 
it, it is no harder to have work done ten days, or 
at least one day, ahead of time than to finish it at 
the last allowable minute. Then, if anything hap- 
pens, it does no harm. This habit will save literary 
workers an incalculable amount of anxiety and 
worry. And it is the wear and tear of worry and 
hurry, not the amount of calm, quiet work, that 
kills such men before their time. 

I am aware that orderliness and punctuality are 
not usually regarded as forms of courage. But the 
essential element of all courage is in them, — the 
power to face a disagreeable present in the interest 
of desirable permanent ends. They are far more 
important in modern life than the courage to face 
bears or bullets. They underlie the more spectacu- 
lar forms of courage. The man who cannot reduce 
to order the things that are lying passively about 
him, and endure the petty pains incidental to doing 
hard things before the sheer lapse of time forces 
him to action, is not the man who will be calm and 
composed when angry mobs are howling about him, 



THE COLLEGE MAN 67 

or who will go steadily on his way when greed and 
corruption, hypocrisy and hate, are arrayed to resist 
him. For, whether in the quiet of a study and the 
routine of an office or in the turmoil of a riot or a 
strike, true courage is the ready and steadfast ac- 
ceptance of whatever pains are incidental to secur- 
ing the personal and public ends that are at stake. 

TEMPERANCE IN DRUGS 

Temperance is closely akin to courage ; for as 
courage takes on the pains which wisdom and jus- 
tice find incidental to their ends, so temperance cuts 
off remorselessly whatever pleasures are inconsis- 
tent with these ends. The temperate man does not 
hate pleasure, any more than the brave man loves 
pain, for its own sake. It is not that he loves pleas- 
ure less, but that he loves wisdom and justice more. 
He puts the satisfaction of his permanent and 
social self over against the fleeting satisfaction of 
some isolated appetite, and cuts off the little pleas- 
ure to gain the lasting personal and social good. 
There is a remark of Hegel which gives the key to 
all true temperance : "In the eye of fate all action 
is guilt." Since we are finite, to do one thing is to 
neglect all the competing alternative courses. We 
cannot have our cake and eat it too. As James 
puts it : " Not that I would not, if I could, be 
both handsome and fat and weU-dressed and a great 
athlete, and make a million a year ; be a wit, a 



68 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

hon-vivant^ and a lady-killer, as well as a philoso- 
pher; a philantliropist, statesman, warrior, and 
African explorer, as well as a ' tone-poet ' and saint. 
But the thing is simply impossible. The million- 
aire's work would run counter to the saint's ; the 
bon-vivant and the philanthropist would trip each 
other up ; and the philosopher and the lady-killer 
could not well keep house in the same tenement of 
clay. So the seeker of his truest, strongest, deepest 
self must review the list carefully, and pick out the 
one on which to stake his salvation." 

Some selection there must be between competing 
and mutually exclusive goods. The intemperate 
man selects what appeals most forcibly to his sen- 
sibilities at the moment. The temperate man se- 
lects that which best fits his permanent ends. There 
is sacrifice in either case. The intemperate man 
sacrifices his permanent and social self to his tran- 
sient physical sensations. The temperate man sac- 
rifices his transient sensations in the interest of his 
permanent and social self. 

The temptation to intemperance comes chiefly 
from a false abstraction of pleasure. Finding that 
some function is attended with pleasure, we per- 
form the function for the sake of the pleasure, for- 
getting to consider the end at which the function 
aims, or even disregarding the end altogether. A 
man seizes on one or another of the more sensitive 
parts of his nervous system, and then contrives ways 



THE COLLEGE MAN 69 

to produce constant or frequently recurrent excita- 
tion. Thus the glutton crams his stomach, not for 
the nourishment and vigor food will give him, but 
for the sensations of agreeable taste and comfortable 
distention. Muscle must toil, brain must plan, and 
every other organ do extra work, simply to give 
the palate its transient titillation and provide the 
stomach its periodic gorge. The drunkard gets the 
whole sympathetic system of nerves into an excita- 
tion so intense as to drive away all concern for other 
things, and fill his consciousness completely full of 
the glorious sense that all is well with his physical 
organism. Tobacco gives a pleasure still farther 
removed from any rational end. With a minimum 
of physical substance, a man can get the sensation 
of working his jaws and lungs, secreting saliva, and 
being in a tranquil state of body and mind. 

Yet if one is bound to have agreeable sensations, 
regardless of their permanent effects, there is a way, 
quick, sure, cheap, refined, convenient, unobtrusive, 
far beyond the crude, climasy devices of glutton, 
drunkard, snuff-taker, chewer, or smoker. With a 
powder so small that it can be held on the tip of a 
penknife, with a tablet a whole bottle of which can 
be carried in the pocket, with a drop injected by 
the hypodermic syringe, one may invoke the magic 
potency of morphine, hashish, or cocaine. 

Such are the latest refinements of intemperance, 
the most improved devices for stimulating our phys- 



70 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

ical and nervous functions into pleasurable activity, 
apart from all consideration of the normal ends the 
functions were evolved to serve. It would be easy 
to hold them up to ridicule. If, in a book of travels, 
we were to read of a tribe in some remote island 
who spent a large portion of their substance gorg- 
ing themselves with a dozen kinds of food at a sin- 
gle meal ; pouring down liquid which made them 
silly and stupid, and therefore careless and happy ; 
stuffing vegetable matter up their noses, or chewing 
it and spitting out the juice, or rolling it up in 
tubes, or putting it in bowls and setting fire to it 
for the f im of pulling the smoke into their mouths 
and puffing it out again ; or injecting under their 
skins substances which would make them lose all 
sense of reality and responsibility, and live in a 
dream world where wishes were horses and beggars 
might ride ; and if we had never heard of such 
practices before, we should not rank them very 
high in the scale of civilization. 

Yet we cannot, if we would, dispose of these 
forms of intemperance by ridicule. In each case 
some pleasure is gained, and that pleasure is so far 
forth a real good. Let us be serious and fair with 
them all. 

The glutton's gorging of his stomach, in so far 
as it produces a pleasurable feeling of distention, 
is good. If a man were nothing but a stomach, and 
that were made of cast iron, then gluttony would 



THE COLLEGE MAN 71 

be not only good, but the highest good. If a man 
were nothing but a bundle of nerves, and these 
were of wire and never subject to reaction, then the 
man who could keep them thrilling most intensely 
by whiskey and champagne would be the wisest 
one of us all. So if man were nothing but a nose, 
and that had the lining of a boiler, then snuff- 
taking would be the acme of virtue. If man were 
reduced to a pair of huge jaws, then chewing would 
be virtue for him. If one were a heating-plant 
chimney, then smoking would be the best he could 
do. If a man need do nothing but dream, then to 
neglect the joys of opium or cocaine would be 
superlative folly. 

The evil of these things is due to the greater 
good they displace. Man is more than stomach or 
nerves or nose or jaws or chimney or dreamer ; and 
indulgence in these departments of his life, imless 
very carefully controlled and restricted, involves 
injury to more important sides of life, out of all 
proportion to the petty gains in these special de- 
partments in question. 

The folly or evil of these practices differs greatly 
in degree, though they are all branches from the 
same psychological root, — the quest of sensations 
divorced from the normal ends the stimulated func- 
tions serve. The list of branches from this same root 
could easily be enlarged. Theoretically, the high- 
est wisdom, the strictest temperance, would elimi- 



72 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

nate them all; not, however, on ascetic grounds, but 
on the rational ground that the wisest man can find 
better use for his time and money, his vitality and 
strength, than in any of these abnormally evoked 
sensations. Yet, practically, something must be con- 
ceded to human weakness and infirmity. To say 
that all these things are theoretically foolish, and 
therefore immoral, does not carry with it the posi- 
tion that every man is a fool and a knave who 
practices them. Gluttony, the use of snuff, and 
chewing, once as prevalent and popular among 
those who could afford them as smoking is now, 
have receded before the advancing march of a 
higher civilization, until they are hardly consistent 
with our ideas of a gentleman. Drunkenness is 
rapidly going into the same category. A century 
ago a man was thought no less a gentleman because 
he was occasionally or even frequently drunk. To- 
day, a man who permits himself to be seen drunk 
is not wanted for employee or partner or son-in-law 
or intimate friend. The victim of drug habits we 
all pity, loathe, and distrust. Moderate drinking 
and smoking are the two forms in which the quest 
for abnormal or non-functional sensation is still in 
vogue. All the other forms of intemperance cited 
have so far received the stigma of social disappro- 
val that their gradual descent through lower and 
lower strata of society to final disuse is merely a 
question of time. 



THE COLLEGE MAN 73 

Moderate drinking and smoking undoubtedly 
have still a long lease of life. There is a good deal 
to be said in behalf of them both. Moderate drink- 
ing temporarily aids digestion, increases good-fel- 
lowship, dispels anxiety and care, and serves one of 
the two purposes of food. We all know multitudes 
of men who have practiced it for years, and are ap- 
parently little the worse for it. To them its discon- 
tinuance would be a real hardship ; costing, perhaps, 
in mental strain and effort and temporary physical 
discomfort, more than the resulting physical gain 
to themselves as individuals. That multitudes of 
people will continue the practice, and will do so 
under the impression, right or wrong, that they are 
doing what is wisest and best for themselves, there 
can be no doubt. Such people are not to be con- 
demned as intemperate. Whatever the final ver- 
dict of physiology may be, so long as these people 
believe on the testimony of expert authorities whose 
judgment they trust, and on their own experience 
so far as they are competent to interpret it, that 
moderation in the use of alcoholic drink is good for 
them, they are wise and temperate in its use. For 
morality is not a matter of right or wrong opinion 
about physiological or social questions. It is a ques- 
tion of personal attitude towards the opinions which 
one holds. 

The man, however, who knows or believes that it 
injures him, and helps materially to injure others, 



74 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

and still continues to use it, thereby confesses him- 
self to be a fool and a slave, and merits our severe 
condemnation. The fundamental elements of man- 
hood are wanting in that man. His rank is lower 
than the beasts ; for they cannot violate a reason 
they do not possess. Instinct does for them what 
the consciously intemperate man lacks the 'stamina 
to do for himself. In view of the doubtful nature 
of the gain which moderate use of alcoholic liquor 
brings even to those who interpret temporary ex- 
hilaration as permanent benefit ; in view of the 
danger that moderation will slip into excess, and 
be caught in the chains of habit ; in view of the 
havoc and misery which liquor causes in the world ; 
in view of the extreme difficulty of securing the 
temperate individual use without complicity in its 
terrible social abuse ; in view of the certainty that in 
the long run the individual would be quite as well 
off without it, and that society as a whole would be 
infinitely the gainer if it were universally discarded 
as a beverage, — the man who seeks to be guided 
in his life by the highest wisdom and the sanest 
temperance, though he have not a particle of ascet- 
icism in his make-up, though he grudge no man 
the joy he gets from a social glass, though he will 
judge no man who conscientiously uses it as either 
morally or spiritually inferior to himseK in conse- 
quence, yet, in the present state of physiological 
knowledge and the existing social conditions that 



THE COLLEGE MAN 75 

attend the use of alcoholic drinks as a beverage, 
will find the better part for himself and the high- 
est service to society in a moderation so strict as 
to amount to practical abstinence. 

Smoking, so easily disposed of on ascetic princi- 
ples, presents, from our point of view, a very diffi- 
cult and delicate question. There is a good deal to 
be said in its behalf. It is a solace of solitude. It 
is a substitute for exercise. It promotes digestion. 
It brings people together on terms of easy and rest- 
ful intimacy ; taking away the chill and stiffness 
from social intercourse, much as an open fire in the 
fireplace adds a cheer to a room, quite independent 
of the warmth it generates. The advantages from 
smoking are not confined exclusively to the imme- 
diate physical sensation. 

Futhermore, when once the habit is established, 
the body adapts itself to it, and contrives, through 
lungs, skin, and kidneys, — though not without 
scenting the clothing with foul exhalations, and 
tainting the breath with offensive odors, — to throw 
the poison off. Hence men who have once formed 
the habit ; who feel that they can afford its con- 
siderable expense, and can find no better use for 
the money it represents ; who gain a good deal of 
pleasure from it, and are able to detect no serious 
physical effects, may well believe (although, if they 
were to look the matter up impartially, the weight 
of scientific testimony would be against them) that, 



76 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

on the whole, for them, situated as they are, the 
continuance of the habit represents the greater 
good. Here, again, it is not for us to judge indi- 
viduals. All we can say is that this is a possible, if 
not the impartial and scientific way of looking at 
the matter. Many do look at it in that light. In 
so far as they are honest in taking that view of the 
matter, they are wise and temperate in smoking 
as they do. If, however, they know it is injuring 
them; if they have a sneaking suspicion, which 
they dare not follow up with a thorough investiga- 
tion, that the practice is injurious in general, and 
is harming themselves in particular, then they are 
fools and slaves to persist in the practice. But 
that is a judgment which the individual, who alone 
knows the facts from the inside, must be left to 
pass upon himself. We who stand on the outside 
cannot get at the inner facts, and so have no right 
to pass such a judgment. At all events, the young 
man who would attune his life to the highest wis- 
dom, and control it by the firmest temperance, will 
not permit himself to form the habit before he has 
attained his full physical and mental stature, and 
has proved his ability with his own hand or brain 
to earn for himself whatever necessities and com- 
forts of life he believes to be more fundamental 
and important than the inhalation and exhalation 
of smoke. 

Let us be careful not to confoimd a wise temper- 



THE COLLEGE MAN 77 

ance with the absurdities and rigors of asceticism. 
Asceticism hates pleasure, and sets itself up as some- 
thing superior to pleasure. Hence it is sour, nar- 
row, repulsive. As Macaulay said of the Puritans, 
" They hated bear-baiting, not because it gave 
pain to the bear, but because it gave pleasure to 
the spectators ; " so the ascetic seems to hate the 
pleasure there is in things, and to begrudge other 
people their joys and consolations. Temperance 
work has too often fallen into the hands of these 
ascetic cranks, who pose as the apostles and mar- 
tyrs of the true and only temperance. 

True temperance is modest. It is nothing in 
itself, but, like courage, simply the handmaid of 
wisdom and justice to carry out their commands. 
Temperance does not hate pleasure. Temperance 
loves pleasure more wisely — that is all. The 
temperate man recognizes that the pleasure of an 
act is a pretty sure indication that the act has 
some elements of good. But temperance denies that 
pleasure is an indication of the relative worth of 
different acts. Reason, not pleasure alone, must 
decide that point. Temperance never cuts off an 
indulgence, unless it be to save some greater and 
more valuable interest of life. Temperance is al- 
ways, if it is modest, and keeps its proper place 
as the handmaid of wisdom, engaged in cutting off 
a lesser to save a greater good. Its weapon and 
symbol is the pruning-knif e ; and its aim and justi- 



78 GREEK QUALITIES IN 

fication is that the vine of life may bear more and 
better fruit. To erect temperance into a positive 
principle, to be merely a temperance man or wo- 
man, to cut off the fair leaves of pleasure merely 
for the sake of cutting them off, is monstrous, im- 
natural, perverse. The great moral motive power 
of life must lie in the positive and pleasurable 
interests which wisdom and justice and faith and 
love lay hold upon. To cast out evil as an end in 
itself is as futile as to try to drive the air out of 
a room with a fan. 

Temperance, indeed, often finds itself arrayed 
against the lower and intenser forms of pleasure. 
That is because, for purposes of her own. Nature 
has attached the keenest pleasure to those instincts 
which are most fundamental to the preservation of 
the individual and the perpetuation of the spe- 
cies. But temperance, if it be wise, — if, that is, it 
be truly moral, — must ever justify itself by those 
personal and social goods at which wisdom and 
justice aim. Hence temperance, though an impor- 
tant virtue in its place, is yet a strictly subordinate 
one. No man can amount to much without con- 
stant practice of stern self-denial and rigid self- 
control. But a man who does nothing but that ; 
the man who erects temperance into a positive 
principle, who believes that the pruning-knife can 
bear fruit of itself, and despises the rich soil that 
feeds the roots and the sweet sap that nourishes 



THE COLLEGE MAN 79 

the branclies of the vine of life, is no man at all. 
The measure and value of our temperance is, not 
the indulgences which we lop off from the branches 
of life here and there, but the beauty and sweet- 
ness and worth of the fruit which is borne by our 
lives as a whole. 

Such are the counsels a Greek philosopher would 
give us, could he return to earth to-day. Would 
give, I say ; for I am well aware that the points I 
have chosen for illustration are, for the most part, 
points on which Plato and Aristotle touched very 
lightly, if at all ; and that on the most important 
of them their precept and practice were in open con- 
tradiction to the precepts I here have set forth. 
I have followed the logic of their principles rather 
than the letter of their precepts. Like a fluid in 
connected vessels, the spiritual life of an age cannot 
rise, in its ethical precept and practice, above the 
level of the prevailing religious conceptions, literary 
standards, political institutions, and social customs. 
No one knew this better than Plato, as is evident 
from his attack on the current literary and religious 
standards of his day, and his attempt to construct 
an ideal republic, where philosophers should be 
kings. Christianity, democracy, and the deepening 
recognition of the rights of personality in men and 
women, children and servants, have lifted the level 
of spiritual life to heights undreamed of by Plato, 



80 GREEK QUALITIES 

and pronounced by Aristotle to be impossible. On 
tbis higber level, tbe old formulas of tbe Greeks 
receive a vastly ricber content and an infinitely 
wider application ; but as forms of statement tbey 
never bave been and never will be surpassed. 

However deep, and wide, and full man's life, 
under Cbristian influence and inspiration, may 
come to be, it will ever retain tbe form tbe old 
Greeks stamped upon it. Man will ever approacb 
perfection in proportion to tbe wisdom witb wbicb 
be grasps tbe permanent ends of bis life, and sub- 
ordinates all means to tbose ends ; tbe justice witb 
wbicb be weigbs tbe interests of bis fellows in tbe 
same scales as bis own ; tbe courage witb wbicb be 
greets all pains incidental to tbe prosecution of bis 
own ends and tbose of bis fellows ; and tbe tem- 
perance witb wbicb be cuts off wbatever pleasure 
proves inconsistent witb tbe steadfast adberence 
to tbese personal and social ends. For tbus to live 
a wise, just, brave, temperate life is to be rigbtly 
related to tbe world, to one's fellows, and to one's 
true self ; and tberefore sums up, as far as etbics 
apart from politics and religion can do it, aU tbe 
virtues and duties of man. 



IV 

The Career of Self-Conquest 

I. FORESIGHT AND REPENTANCE 

SINCE psychology and ethics are partners, ethics 
is bound to take the first chance to return 
psychology's lead. As long as psychology put full- 
fledged faculties of free will and conscience into the 
soul's original outfit, it was all very well for ethics 
to respond with inexplicable intuitions and categori- 
cal imperatives. Now that psychology is telling us 
that the will is simply " the sum total of our mental 
states in so far as they involve attentive guidance 
of conduct," and its sole sphere of action " the 
attentive furthering of our interest in one act or 
desire as against all others present to our minds at 
the same time," ethics can no longer put us off with 
cut and dried rules for keeping a fixed, formal self 
out of mischief, but must show us how, from the 
raw materials of appetites, passions, and instincts, 
with the customs, institutions, and ideals of the race 
for our models, to create, each man for himself, an 
individuality of ever tightening coherence and ever 
expanding dimensions. 

This twofold task, to preserve the unity of life at 
the same time that we multiply and magnify the 



82 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

interests we unify, gives to ethics at once its diffi- 
culty and its zest. Either half of this task would 
be easy and stupid. If unification, simplicity, peace, 
is our sole aim, we have but to call in the monks and 
the mystics, the lamas and the mental healers, for 
a haK-dozen lessons and treatments. If, on the 
other hand, we aim at bulk, complexity, tension, 
almost any business man, or club woman, or "globe- 
trotter," or debauchee can teach us as much as 
that. To challenge the simple unity of our habitual 
lives by every interest that promises enlargement 
and enrichment, and in turn to challenge each new 
interest in the name of a singleness of purpose 
which it may stretch as much as it please, but on 
no account shall break, — this double task is hard 
indeed ; the zest of this game is great. 

In a task so difficult as this of relating ever new 
materials to each other in the unity of an organic 
whole, failure is the only roadway to success. For 
there are ten thousand possible combinations of our 
appetites, desires, interests, and affections, of which 
only one precise, definite way can be right, and all 
the rest must be wrong. As Aristotle learned from 
the Pythagoreans, virtue is definite or limited ; vice 
is indefinite, or infinite. It is so easy to miss the 
mark that any fool can be vicious ; so hard to hit 
it that the strongest man's first efforts go astray. 
" Adam's fall " was foreordained by stronger powers 
than even the decree of a God. For every son of 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 83 

Adam, sin, or the missing of the perfect mark, is a 
psychological necessity. Nothing short of a miracle 
could prevent a man's first, experimental adjust- 
ments of his environment to himself from being the 
failures they are. For in every art and craft, in 
every game and sport where skill is involved, the 
progressive elimination of errors is the only way to 
a perfection which is ever approximated, but never 
completely attained. 

Yet the difficulty of the moral life is at the same 
time its glory. For the very source of the difficulty 
may be turned into a weapon of conquest. The 
difficulty is all due to the organic connection of ex- 
perience. If experiences stood alone, disconnected, 
the moral problem would be simple indeed. Hun- 
ger feasting is better than hunger starved ; thirst 
drinking is better than thirst unquenched ; weari- 
ness resting is better than weariness at work. If 
the feast, or the drink, or the rest were the only 
things to be considered, then the gratification of 
each desire as fast as it arose would be the whole 
duty of man. None but a fool could err. But, on 
the other hand, the wise man would be no better oflE 
than the fool. There would be no use for his wis- 
dom, no world of morals to conquer. 

Foresight is the first great step in this career of 
moral conquest. The mind within and the world 
without are parallel streams of close-linked se- 
quences, in which what goes in as present cause 



84 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

comes out as future effect. TMs linkage at the 
same time binds and sets us free. It binds us to 
the effect, if we take the cause. It sets us free in 
the effect, if the effect is foreseen, and the cause 
is chosen with a view to the effect. These streams 
of sequence repeat themselves. They are reducible 
to constant types. They can be accepted or rejected 
as wholes. To accept such a whole, taking an un- 
desirable present cause for the sake of a desirable 
future effect, is active foresight, or courage. To 
reject a whole, foregoing a desired present cause in 
order to escape an undesirable future effect, is pas- 
sive foresight, or temperance. Foresight reads into 
present appetite its future meaning ; and if backed 
up by temperance and courage, rejects or accepts 
the immediate gratification according as its total 
effect is repugnant or desirable. 

It is at this point that vice creeps into life. If 
virtue is choosing the whole life history, so far as it 
can be foreseen, in each gratification or repression 
of a particular desire, vice is the sacrificing of the 
whole self to a single desire. How is this possible? 

Partly through ignorance or lack of foresight. 
Yet vice due to ignorance is pardonable, and is 
hardly to be called vice at all. It is sheer stupid- 
ity. This, however, which was the explanation of 
Socrates, lets us off too easily. 

Vice is due chiefly to inattention ; not ignorance, 
but thoughtlessness. " I see the better and approve, 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 85 

yet I pursue the worse." In this case knowledge 
is not absent, but defective. It is on the margin, 
not in the focus, of consciousness. In the language 
of physiological psychology, a present appetite pre- 
sents its claims on great billows of nerve commotion 
which come rolling in with all the tang and pungency 
which are the characteristic marks of immediate pe- 
ripheral excitation. The future consequences of the 
gratification of that appetite, on the contrary, are 
represented by the tiny, faint, feeble waves which 
flow over from some other brain centre, excited long 
ago, when the connection of this particular cause 
with its natural effect was first experienced. In such 
an unequal contest between powerful vibrations shot 
swift and straight along the tinghng nerves from 
the seat of immediate peripheral commotion, and 
the meagre, measured flow of faded impressions 
whose initial velocity and force were long since 
spent, what wonder that the remote effect seems 
dim, vague, and unreal, and that the immediate 
gratification of the insistent, clamorous appetite or 
passion wins the day ! This is the modern expla- 
nation of Aristotle's old problem of incontinence. 

Whence, then, comes repentance? From the 
changed proportions in which acts present them- 
selves to our afterthought. " The tumult and the 
shouting dies." The appetite, once so urgent and 
insistent, lies prostrate and exhausted. Its clamor- 
ous messages stop. The pleasure it brought dies 



86 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

down, vanishes into the thin air of memory and 
symbolical representation, out of which it can only 
call to us with hollow, ghost-like voice. On the 
contrary, the effect, whether it be physical pains, or 
the felt contempt of others, or the sense of our own 
shame, gets physical reinforcement from without, 
or invades those cells of the brain where memory 
of the consequences of this indulgence lie, latent 
but never dead, and stirs them to the very depths. 
Now all the vividness and pimgency and tang are 
on their side. They cry out Fool ! Shame ! Sin ! 
Guilt ! Condemnation ! Then we wonder how we 
could have been fools enough to take into our lives 
such a miserable combination of cause and effect as 
this has proved to be. The act we did and the act 
we repent of doing are in one sense the same. But 
we did it with the attractive cause in the fore- 
ground, and the repulsive effect in the background. 
We repent of the same act with the repulsive effect 
vivid in the foreground of present consciousness, 
and the attractive cause in the dim background of 
memory. Then we vow that we will never admit 
that combination into our lives again. 

Will we keep our vow ? That depends on our 
ability to recall the point of view we gained in the 
mood of penitence the next time a similar combi- 
nation presents itself. It will come on as before, 
with the attractive offer of some immediate good in 
the foreground, and the unwelcome effect trailing 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 87 

obscurely in the rear. If we take it as it comes, 
adding to the presentation no contribution of our 
own, we shall repeat the folly and vice of the past, 
— become again the passive slaves of circumstance, 
the easy prey of appetite and passion, the stupid 
victims of the serpent's subtlety. 

Our freedom, our moral salvation, lies in our 
power to call up our past experience of penitence 
and lay this revived picture of the act, with effect 
in the foreground, on top of the vivid picture which 
appetite presents. If we succeed in making the pic- 
ture that we reproduce from within the one which 
determines our action, we shall act wisely and well. 
By reflecting often upon the pictures drawn for us 
in our moments of penitence, by reviving them at 
intervals when they are not immediately needed, 
and by forming the habit of always calling them 
up in moments of temptation, we can give to these 
pictures, painted by our own penitence, the control 
of our lives. This is our charter of freedom ; and 
though precept, example, and the experience of 
others may be called in to supplement our own per- 
sonal experience, this power to revive the actual or 
borrowed lessons of repentance is the only free- 
dom we have. Call it memory, attention, foresight, 
prudence, watchfulness, ideal construction, or what 
name we please, the secret of our freedom, the key to 
character, the control of conduct, lies exclusively in 
this power to force into the foreground considera- 



88 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

tions wliicli of themselves tend to slip into the back- 
ground, so that, as in a well-constructed cyclorama, 
where actual walls and fences join on to painted 
walls and fences without apparent break, the im- 
mediately presented desire, backed up by all the 
impetus of immediate physical excitation, shall 
count for precisely its proportionate worth in a re- 
presentation of the total consequences of which it 
is the cause. 

II. SOCIAL SYMPATHY AND RESPONSIBILITY 

If I were the only person in the world, if all the 
other forces were material things, with no wills of 
their own, then the single principle of inserting into 
the stream of sequence the causes which lead to the 
future I desire for myself, and excluding those of 
which I have had reason to repent, would be the 
whole of ethics. Fortunately life is not so simple 
and monotonous as all that. The world is full of 
other wills as eager, as interesting, as strenuous, 
as brave as we, in our best moments, know our 
own to be. By sympathy, imagination, insight, and 
affection we can enrich our lives an hundred-fold by 
making their aims and aspirations, their interests 
and struggles, their joys and sorrows our own. Not 
only can we do this, but to some extent we must. 
It is impossible to Hve an isolated life, apart from 
our fellows. Man is by nature social. Alone he be- 
comes inhuman. A life which has no outlet in 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 89 

sympathy with other lives is unendurable. If 
men cannot find some one to love, they insist on at 
least finding some one to quarrel with, or defy, or 
maltreat, or at least despise. Even hatred and 
cruelty and pride have this social motive at their 
heart, and in spite of themselves are witnesses to 
the essentially social nature of man, and the soul 
of latent goodness buried beneath the hardest of 
corrupted and perverted hearts. 

Our social nature complicates and at the same 
time elevates enormously the moral problem. It is 
no longer a question of dovetailing together the 
petty fragments of my own little life so as to make 
their paltry contents a coherent whole ; I now have 
the harder and more glorious task of making my 
life as a whole an effective and harmonious element 
in the larger whole which includes the lives of my 
fellows and myself. Here again there is a vast task 
for the imagination to perform ; a more spacious 
cyclorama for it to construct. Not merely the effects 
upon myself, but the consequences for as many of 
my fellows as my act directly and traceably affects, 
I must now represent. Before I can permit an act 
to find a place in my present conduct I must fore- 
see, not only what it means for my own future, 
but for the future of all my neighbors who come 
within the range of its influence. 

For their future is, in proportion to the close- 
ness of the ties that bind us, almost as completely 



90 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

in my control as it is in their own. Indeed, if I be 
the stronger person, if I have clear foresight where 
their prevision is dim, if I grasp firmly aims which 
they hold but feebly, their future may be even 
more in my hands than it is in their own. Thus 
the parent is more responsible for the child's fu- 
ture than is the child himself. The husband often 
holds the alternative of life or death for his wife 
in his hands, according as he is patient, forbearing, 
considerate, and kind, or exacting, inconsiderate, 
cross, and cruel. The wife, on the other hand, 
more often holds the future of her husband's 
character in her hands, making him sober and hon- 
est if she is winsome and sincere, driving him to 
drink if she is slovenly and querulous, leading 
him into dishonesty if she is extravagant and vain. 
Every person of any considerable strength of char- 
acter can recall many an instance in which by a 
haK-hour's conversation, followed up by occasional 
suggestions afterward, he has changed the whole 
subsequent career of another person. To one who 
has discovered the secret of this power, a week per- 
mitted to pass by without thus changing the life- 
currents of half a dozen of his fellows would seem 
a wicked, wanton waste of life's chief privilege and 
joy. I could name a quiet, modest man who at a 
low estimate has changed directly and radically for 
the better a thousand human lives ; and indirectly, 
to an appreciable degree, certainly not less than a 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 91 

hundred thousand. He is no professional preacher 
or evangelist; and the greater part of this vast 
work has been done in quiet conversation, mainly 
in his own home, and by correspondence. 

Such power of one man over another is in no 
way inconsistent with the freedom and responsi- 
bility of them both. In psychical as in physical 
causation many antecedents enter into each effect. 
When I pull the trigger of my shotgun, and by so 
doing shoot a partridge, I am by no means the 
only cause of the bird's death. The maker of the 
powder, the maker of the shot, the man who put 
them together in the cartridge, the maker of the 
gun, the dog that helped me find the bird, and 
countless other forces, which we express in such 
general terms as the laws of chemistry and physics, 
enter into the production of the effect. Neverthe- 
less, my pulling the trigger, though not the whole 
cause, is a real cause. Precisely so when I offer my 
boy a quarter for shooting a partridge, and under 
the influence of that inducement he goes hunting, 
he is just as free in trying to secure the reward as 
I am in offering it. Both my desire for the par- 
tridge, which leads me to offer the prize, and his 
desire for the quarter are factors in producing the 
result. We are both free in our acts, and both 
share responsibility for the shooting of the bird. 
For that act figured alike in his future and in my 
future as an element in a desired whole. The same 



92 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

external fact may enter as an element in the free- 
dom of thousands of persons. A great work of art, 
for example, is an expression of the freedom not 
only of the artist who paints or writes, but of all 
who see or read in it that which they long for and 
admire. The goods of the will and the spirit, un- 
like the goods of the mill and the market, are '' in 
widest commonalty spread." They refuse to make 
objects of exclusive possession. I cannot intensely 
cherish an idea, or entertain a plan, for which my 
fellows shall not be either the better or the worse. 
Every conscious act deliberately chosen and ac- 
cepted is an act of freedom, and every word or 
deed goes forth from us freighted with social con- 
sequence, and weighted to that precise extent with 
moral responsibility. 

Hence social imagination or sympathy is the 
second great instrument of morality, as individual 
imagination or foresight was the first. If our in- 
dividual salvation is by foresight and repentance, 
our social salvation is through imagination and 
love. No logical " reconciliation of egoism and 
altruism " is possible ; for that would involve re- 
ducing one of the two elements to terms of the 
other. Both are facts of human experience, found 
in every normal life. I live my own life by setting 
before myseK a future, and taking the means that 
lead thereto. I find this life worth living in pro- 
portion to the length and breadth and height of 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 93 

the aims I set before myself, and the wisdom 
and skill I bring to bear upon their achieve- 
ment. But I cannot make my own aims long, 
wide, or high, without at the same time taking 
account of the aims of my fellows. I may clash 
with them, and try to use them as means to my 
own ends. That leads to strife and bitterness, 
sorrow and shame. Either my own ends are de- 
feated, if, as is generally the case, my fellows prove 
stronger than I ; or else they are won at such cost 
of injury to others that in comparison they seem 
poor and pitiful, not worth the winning. This is 
the experience of the normal man; and though 
by pride and hardness of heart one may make shift 
to endure a comparatively egoistic life, no person 
can find it so good as never to be haunted by vis- 
ions of a better, which sympathy and love might 
bring. 

On the other hand, if I generously take into 
account the aims of my fellow-man, and live in 
them with the same eagerness with which I live 
in my own, using for him the same foresight and 
adaptation of means to ends that I would use for 
myself, throwing my own resources into the scale 
of his interests when his resources are inadequate, 
sharing with him the sorrow of temporary defeat, 
and the triumph of hard-won victories, I find my 
own life more than doubled by this share in the 
life of another. The little that I add to his fore- 



94 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

sight and strengtli, if given with sympathy and 
love, when added to the energy, latent or active, 
which he already has, works wonders out of all 
proportion to the results I could achieve in my 
life alone, or which he alone could achieve in 
his. Love not merely adds ; it multiplies ; as in 
the story of the loaves and fishes. It not only 
increases ; it magnifies the life, alike of him who 
gives and him who receives. Just why it should 
do so is hard to explain in purely egoistic terms ; 
as hard as to explain to an oyster why dogs like 
to run and bark ; or to a heap of sand why the 
particles of a crystal arrange themselves in the 
wondrous ways they do. It is a simple, ultimate 
fact of experience that just as a life of individual 
foresight is on the whole better worth living than 
the life of hand-to-mouth gratification, so the life 
of loving sympathy is a life infinitely more blessed 
than the best success the poor self-centred egoist 
can ever know. If a selfish life were found on the 
basis of wide experience and comprehensive gen- 
eralization to be a more blessed and glorious life 
than the life of loving sympathy, then the selfish 
life would be the life we ought to live : precisely 
as if houses in which the centre of gravity faUs 
outside the base were the most stable and graceful 
structures men could build, that would be the style 
of architecture we all " ought " to adopt. Ethics 
and architecture are both ideal pursuits, in the 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 95 

sense that they have as their object to make a 
present ideal plan into a future fact. But both 
must build their ideals out of the solid facts of 
past experience. It is just as undeniable, unescap- 
able a fact of ethics that the aim of a noble and 
blessed life must f aU outside its own individual in- 
terests, as it is an undeniable, unescapable law of 
architecture that the centre of gravity of a stable, 
graceful structure must fall within its base. 

StiU the appeal to brute fact, though valid, is 
not ultimate. There is a reason for the fact that 
structures in which the centre of gravity falls out- 
side the base are unstable ; and physics formulates 
that reason in the law of gravitation. So there is 
a reason why a selfish life is unsatisfactory ; and 
ethics formulates that reason in the law of love. 
These facts are so ; but they have to be so because 
they could not find a place in the total system of 
things if they were otherwise. A universe of con- 
sistent egoists would not be a permanent possi- 
bility. It could only exist temporarily as a hell in 
process of its own speedy disruption and dissolu- 
tion. 

Yet just as a man can forget his own future, 
and in so doing wrong his own soul, a man can 
be blind to the consequence of his act for his 
neighbor, and in so doing wrong society and his 
own social nature. The root of all social sin is this 
blindness to social consequence. Hence the great 



96 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

task of sound ethics is to stimulate the social im- 
agination. We must be continually prodding our 
sense of social consequence to keep it wide awake. 
We must be asking ourselves at each point of con- 
tact with the lives of others such pointed questions 
as these : How would you like to be this tailor or 
washerwoman whose bill you have neglected to 
pay ? How would you like to be the customer to 
whom you are selling these adulterated or inferior 
goods ? How would you like to be the investor in 
this stock company which you are promoting with 
water ? How would you like to be the taxpayer of 
the city which you are plundering by lending your 
official sanction to contracts and deals which make 
its buildings and supplies and services cost more 
than any private individual would have to pay? 
How would you like to be the employer whose time 
and tools and material you are w^asting at every 
chance you get to loaf and shirk and neglect the 
duties you are paid to perform ? How would you 
like to be the clerk or saleswoman in the store 
where you are reaping extra dividends by impos- 
ing harder conditions than the state of trade and 
the market compel you to adopt ? How would you 
like to be the stoker or weaver or mechanic on the 
wages you pay and the conditions of labor you im- 
pose ? How would you like to live out the dreary, 
degraded, outcast future of the woman whom you 
wantonly ruin for a moment's passionate pleasure ? 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 97 

How would you like to be the man whose good 
name you injure by slander and false accusation ? 
How would you like to be the business rival whom 
you deprive of his little all by using your greater 
wealth in temporary cut-throat competition ? 

These are the kind of questions the social im- 
agination is asking of us at every turn. There are 
severe conditions of trade, politics, war, which 
often compel us to do cruel things and strike hard, 
crushing blows. For these conditions we are not 
always individually responsible. The individual 
who will hold his place, and maintain an effective 
position in the practical affairs of the world, must 
repeatedly do the things he hates to do, and file 
his silent protest, and work for such gradual change 
of conditions as will make such hard, cruel acts no 
longer necessary. We must sometimes collect the 
rent of the poor widow, and exact the task from 
the sick woman, and pay low wages to the man 
with a large family, and turn out the well-meaning 
but inefficient employee. We must resist good 
men in the interest of better things they cannot 
see, and discipline children for reasons which they 
cannot comprehend. Yet even in these cases where 
we have to sacrifice other people, we must at least 
feel the sacrifice ; we must be as sorry for them as 
we would be for ourselves if we were in their place. 
We must not turn out the inefficient employee, 
unless we would be willing to resign his place our- 



98 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

selves, if we held it and were in it as inefficient as 
he. We must not exact the rent or the task from 
the poor widow or the sick saleswoman, unless on 
the whole if we were in their places we should be 
willing to pay the rent or perform the task. Even 
this principle will not entirely remove hardship, 
privation, and cruelty from our complex modern 
life. But it will very greatly reduce it ; and it wiU 
take out of life what is the crudest element of it 
all, — the hardness of human hearts. 

To sternly refuse any gain that is purchased by 
another's loss, or any pleasure bought with an- 
other's pain ; to make this sensitiveness to the in- 
terests of others a living stream, a growing plant 
within our individual hearts ; to challenge every 
domestic and personal relation, every industrial 
and business connection, every political and offi- 
cial performance, every social and intellectual aspi- 
ration, by this searching test of social consequence 
to those our act affects, — this is the second stage 
of the moral life ; this is one of the two great com- 
mandments of Christianity. 

III. AUTHORITY AND PUNISHMENT 

To see the whole effect upon ourselves, and upon 
others, of each act which we perform is the secret 
of the moral life. Yet we are shortsighted by na- 
ture, and often blinded by prejudice and passion. 
The child at first is scarcely able to see vividly and 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 99 

clearly beyond the present moment and his individ- 
ual desires. And in many respects we all remain 
mere children to the end. Is not the moral task 
then impossible ? 

Hard it is indeed. Impossible, too, it would be, 
if we had no tools to work with ; no helps in this 
hard task. Fortunately we have the needed helps, 
and they come first in the authority of our parents 
and rulers. Their wider experience enables them 
to see what the child cannot see. Their command- 
ments, therefore, if they are wise and good, point 
in the direction of consequences which the child 
cannot see at the time, but which, when he does 
see, he will accept as desirable. An act which leads 
to an unseen good consequence, done in obedience 
to trusted authority or respected law, is right. 
The person who does such an act is righteous. And 
the righteousness of it rests on faith, — faith in 
the goodness and wisdom of the person he obeys. 
Righteousness at this stage, therefore, is goodness 
" going it blind," as the slang phrase is ; or, in 
more orthodox terms, walking by faith, and not by 
sight. 

As long as the child walks in implicit trust in 
the wisdom and goodness of his parents he cannot 
go far astray. Ignorant, shortsighted, inexperienced 
as he is, he nevertheless is guided by a vicarious 
intelligence, in which the wisdom and experience 
of the race are reproduced and interpreted for him 



100 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

in each new crisis by the insight of love. What 
wonder, then, that the commandment. Honor thy 
father and thy mother, whether in Hebrew or Chi- 
nese legislation, is the great commandment with 
promise ! Not only does the obedient child in par- 
ticular cases get the consequences which he after- 
wards comes to see were desirable, but he acquires 
habits of doing the kind of acts which lead to de- 
sirable consequences, and of refraining from the 
kind of acts which lead to undesirable consequences. 
These habits are the broad base on which all subse- 
quent character rests, as on a solid rock deeply sunk 
in the firm soil of the unconscious. As our bodies 
are first nourished by our mother's milk, our souls 
are built up first out of the habits of acting which 
we derive directly from doing what our mothers tell 
us to do in thousands of specific, concrete cases, and 
refraining from doing the things their gentle wis- 
dom firmly forbids. The love of mothers is the cord 
that ties each newborn soul fast to the wisdom and 
experience of the race. '' We are suckled at the 
breast of the universal ethos," chiefly through the 
vicarious maternal intelligence. Hence the awful 
waste, amounting to a crime against both the hard- 
won ideals and standards of the race and the fu- 
ture character of the child, when indolent, or vain, 
or ambitious mothers turn over the formative years 
of their children to ignorant, undeveloped nurses ! 
Though the chances are that the average nurse will 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 101 

prove quite as wise and good a guide to the young 
mind as a mother who is capable of turning her 
child over to the exclusive training of any other 
guide than herself. The pity is not so much that 
the ambitious mother relinquishes her highest and 
holiest function as that there are children born who 
have mothers capable of doing it. Given such 
mothers, the nurses are often a great improvement 
on them. 

The derivative, vicarious nature of righteousness 
at this stage makes clear the need and justification of 
punishment. The mother sees a great, far-off good, 
which the child cannot see at all. She commands 
the child to act in a way to secure this good as a 
consequence. He disobeys. He loses the conse- 
quence which she desires for him. He weakens the 
indispensable habit of obedience, on which count- 
less other great goods beyond his vision depend. 
He cannot see vividly either the specific good at 
which she aims or the general good that flows 
from the habit of implicit obedience. She then 
brings within the range of his keen and vivid ex- 
perience some such minor and transitory evil as 
a spanking or being sent supperless to bed, and 
makes him understand that, if he cannot see the 
good of obedience, he can count with certainty on 
these evils of disobedience. Punishment, then, is an 
act of the truest kindness and consideration. It is 
a help to that instinctive and implicit obedience to 



102 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

authority, on whicli the child's greatest good at this 
stage of his development depends. No child will 
permanently resent such well-meant punishment. 
As Mrs. Browning says : — 

A mother never is afraid 
Of speaking angerly to any child, 
Since love, she knows, is justified of love. 

The withholding of punishment in such cases is 
the real cruelty, and the mother who is weak 
enough to do it is a mawkish sentimentalist, to 
whom a few passing cries and tears are of more 
consequence than the future welfare and perma- 
nent character of her child. From this point of view, 
punishment is an act of mercy and kindness, as 
Plato shows us so clearly in the Gorgias. Every 
mother who believes her child to be ever so little 
below the angels is bound to substitute the gentler 
evils of artificial punishment for the greater evils 
of a life of unpunished naughtiness. 

All moral punishment, whether inflicted by par- 
ents, schools, colleges, or courts of justice, is of this 
nature. It helps the offender to see both ends of 
his deed. When he commits the offense, he sees 
vividly only one end of it, the temporary advantage 
to himself as an individual. He does not see with 
equal vividness the other end, — the injury to the 
interests of others, and to his own best self as a 
potential participant in these larger interests. Pun- 
ishment attempts to bring home to him, if not in 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 103 

the precise terms of his offense, an eye for an eye, 
a tooth for a tooth, at least a partial equivalent, in 
privation of money or liberty or public favor, the 
other end of his act, which at the time of acting he 
did not keenly and vividly appreciate. Such strict 
retribution is the best favor we can confer on an 
offender, so long as he remains unrepentant. To 
give him less than this is to cut him off from his 
only chance to get a right view of his own wrong 
act. It is the only way to open his eyes to see his 
act in its totality. 

What if a man repents ? Shall we still punish 
him ? Not if the repentance is genuine and thor- 
oughgoing. What, then, is true repentance? An 
evil act, as we have seen, has two ends : one attrac- 
tive to the individual, for the sake of which he does 
it ; the other injurious to his own better self and to 
the interests of others. This second end the wrong- 
doer does not see clearly when he commits the 
offense. Afterwards he sees it, in its natural con- 
sequences, — in the indignation of the offended, in 
the condemnation of society, in the imminence of 
punishment. This second part of his act, when it 
comes home to him, he does not like, but wishes him- 
self well out of it. This, however, is not repentance ; 
and no amount of tears and promises and impor- 
tunities should ever deceive us into accepting this 
dislike of unpleasant consequences for a genuine 
repentance of the wrong act. Every wise parent, 



104 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

every efficient college officer, every just judge, must 
harden his heart against all these selfish lamenta- 
tions, and discount them in advance as a probable 
part of the culprit's natural programme. Dislike 
of impleasant consequences to one's self is not 
repentance. Repentance must reach back to the 
original act, and include both the pleasant cause 
and its unpleasant consequences to others, as well 
as to one's self, in the unity of one total deed, and 
then repudiate that deed as a whole. When re- 
pentance does that, it does the whole moral work 
which punishment aims to do. To inflict punishment 
after such repentance is inexcusable and wanton 
brutality. 

The theory of punislnnent is clear ; its applica- 
tion is the most difficult of tasks. It is very hard 
to discriminate in many cases real repentance from 
dislike of unpleasant personal consequences. Then 
it is hard to justify severity toward one who is be- 
lieved to be unrepentant, and absolute forgiveness 
to one who has shown evidence of true penitence. 
Whoever has to administer punishment on a large 
scale, and attempts to be inflexibly retributive to 
the impenitent and infinitely merciful toward the 
penitent, must expect to be grossly misunderstood 
and severely criticised for all he does and all he 
refrains from doing. If the way of the transgressor 
is hard, the way of the moral punisher is harder. 
The state practically confesses its inability to dis- 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 105 

criminate true from false repentance ; and lowers 
its practice from the moral plane of retribution or 
forgiveness to the merely legal plane of social pro- 
tection, giving to the executive a power of pardon 
by which to correct the more glaring mistakes of 
the courts. In view of the clumsiness of the means 
at its disposal, the great diversity of moral condi- 
tion in its citizens, and the impersonality of its re- 
lations, probably this protective theory of punish- 
ment, which says to the offender, " I punish you, 
not for stealing sheep, but to prevent other sheep 
from being stolen," is the best working theory for 
practical jurisprudence. But it is utterly unmoral. 
It has no place in the family. Only in extreme 
cases is it defensible in school and college. In set- 
tling personal qurrrels it should have small place. 
Uncompromising retribution to the impenitent, un- 
reserved forgiveness to the penitent, which Chris- 
tianity sets forth as the attitude of God, is the 
only right course for men who are called to per- 
form this infinitely difficult task of moral punish- 
ment. 

IV. THE SY^IBOLICAL VALIDITY OF MORAL LAWS 

The success of the ethical life depends on keep- 
ing the consequences of our acts, for ourselves and 
for others, vividly in the foreground of the mind. 
Personal authority of parents and rulers, supported 
by swift, sure penalties for disobedience, is the first 



106 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

great help to the good life. But we cannot always 
have parents, tutors, and governors standing over 
us to teU us what to do and what not to do ; to 
reward us if we do right and punish us if we do 
wrong. Still less can we afford to rely on natural 
penalties alone, as they teach us their lessons in 
the slow and costly school of experience. The next 
stage of moral development employs as sjonbols of 
the consequences we cannot foresee and appreciate 
maxims to guide the individual life, and laws to 
represent the claims of our fellows upon us. These 
maxims and laws have no intrinsic worth. Their 
authority is all derived and representative. Yet 
inasmuch as they represent individual or social con- 
sequences, they have all the authority of the conse- 
quences themselves. More than that, since con- 
sequences are particular and limited, while these 
maxims and laws are universal, these maxims and 
laws, derivative and representative symbols though 
they are, have a sacredness and authority far higher 
and greater than that of any particular consequences 
for which in a given case they happen to stand. 

These maxims and laws are like the items on 
a merchant's ledger ; or, better still, like the cur- 
rency which represents the countless varieties of 
commodities and services we buy and sell. The 
items on the ledger, the bills in the pocketbook, 
have no intrinsic value. Yet it were far better for 
a merchant to be careless about his cotton cloth or 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 107 

molasses or any particular commodity in which he 
deals, than to be careless about his accounts, which 
represent commodities of all kinds ; better for any 
one of us to forget where we laid our coat or our 
shoes or umbrella, than to leave lying around loose 
the dollar bills which are symbols of the value of 
these and a thousand other articles we possess. 
Precisely so, the authority and dignity of moral 
maxims and laws are in no way impaired by frankly 
acknowledging their intrinsic worthlessness. To 
violate one of these maxims, to break one of these 
laws, is as foolish and wicked as it would be to 
set fire to a merchant's ledger, or to tear up one's 
dollar bills. These maxims and laws are our moral 
currency, coined by the experience of the race, and 
stamped with universal approval. Their authority 
rests on the consequences which they represent ; 
and their validity, as representative of those con- 
sequences, is attested by the experience of the race 
in innumerable cases. A moral law is a prophecy 
of consequences based on the widest possible in- 
duction. Hence the man who seeks a satisfactory 
future for himself, and for those his act affects, in 
other words the moral man, must obey these max- 
ims and laws in all ordinary cases without stopping 
to verify the consequences they represent, any more 
than an ordinary citizen investigates the solvency 
of the government every time he receives its legal 
tender notes. 



108 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

This illustration at the same time reveals the 
almost universal validity of moral laws, and yet 
leaves the necessary room for rare and imperative 
exceptions. A man may find it wise to burn dol- 
lar bills. If he is in camp, and likely to perish with 
cold, and no other kindling is available, he will 
kindle his fire with dollar bills. He will be very 
reluctant to do it, however. He will realize that 
he is kindling a very costly fire. He will consent 
to do it only as a last resort, and when the fire is 
worth more to him, not merely than the intrinsic, 
but than the symbolic value of the bills. Now 
there may be rare cases when a moral law must be 
broken on the same principle that a man kindles 
a fire with dollar bills. The cases will be about as 
rare when it will be right to steal or lie as it is rare 
to find circumstances when it is wise to build a fire 
with dollar bills. They come perhaps once or twice 
in a lifetime to one or two in every thousand men. 
The breaking of a moral law always involves evil 
consequences, far outweighing any particular good 
that can ordinarily be gained thereby, through 
weakening confidence and respect for the validity 
and authority of the law itself. Yet there are ex- 
ceptional, abnormal conditions of war, or sickness, 
or insanity, or moral perversity, where the defense of 
precious interests against pathological and perverse 
conditions may warrant the breaking of a moral 
law, on the same principle that impending freezing 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 109 

would warrant the lighting of a thousand-dollar 
fire. 

One hesitates to give examples of circumstances 
which justify the breaking of a moral law, for fear 
of giving to exceptions a portion of the emphasis 
which belongs exclusively to the rule, and falling into 
the moral abyss of a Jesuitical casuistry. Yet it is 
an invariable rule of teaching never to give an ab- 
stract principle without its accompanying concrete 
case. Hence, if cases must be given, the lie to di- 
vert the murderer from his victim, the horse seized 
to carry the wounded man to the surgeon, the lie 
that withholds the story of a repented wrong from 
the scandalmonger who would wreck the happiness 
of a home by peddling it abroad, are instances of 
the extreme urgency that might warrant the build- 
ing of a thousand-dollar bonfire which takes place 
whenever we break a moral law. The law against 
adultery, on the other hand, admits no conceivable 
exception ; for no good could possibly be gained 
thereby that would be commensurate with the un- 
dermining of the foundations of the home- 
Moral laws are the coined treasures of the moral 
experience of the race, stamped with social ap- 
proval. As such they are binding on each individ- 
ual, as the only terms on which he can be admitted 
to a free exchange of the moral goods of the society 
of which he is a member. No man can command 
the respect of himself or of society who permits 



110 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

himself to fall below the level of these rigid re- 
quirements. 

The mere keeping of the law, however, does not 
make one a moral man. It may insure a certain 
mediocrity of conduct which passes for respecta- 
bility. But one is not morally free, he does not get 
the characteristic dignity and joy of the moral life, 
until he is lifted clear above a slavish conformity 
to law into hearty appreciation of the meaning of 
the law and enthusiastic devotion to the great end 
at which all laws aim. A juiceless, soulless, loveless 
Pharisaism is the best morality mere law can give. 
To protest against the slavery and insincerity of 
such a scheme was no small part of the negative 
side of the mission of Jesus and Paul. 

Yet the freedom which Jesus brings, the free- 
dom which all true ethical systems insist on as the 
very breath of the moral life, is not freedom from 
but freedom in the requirements of the law. It is 
not freedom to break the law, except in those very 
rare instances cited above, where the very principle 
on which the law is founded demands the breaking 
of the letter of the law in the interest of its own 
spiritual fulfillment. It is doubtless true that no 
man keeps any law aright who would not dare to 
break it, I lack the true respect for life which is 
at the heart of the law against murder if I would 
not kill a murderer to prevent him from taking the 
life of an innocent victim. I do not reaUy love the 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 111 

right relation between persons which is the heart 
of truth if I would not dare to deceive a scandal- 
monger, intent on sowing seeds of bitterness and 
hate. I do not love that welfare of mankind which 
is the significance and justification of property if 
I would be afraid to drive off a horse which did 
not belong to me to take the wounded man to the 
surgeon in time to save unnecessary amputation or 
needless death. I do not believe in that union of 
happy hearts which is the soul of marriage if I 
would not, like Caponsacchi, risk hopeless misun- 
derstanding, and shock convention, in order to let 
the light of love shine on a nature from which it 
had been monstrously, cruelly, wantonly withheld. 
There is nothing antinomian in this freedom in 
the law. He who will attempt the role of Capon- 
sacchi must, like him, have a purity of heart as 
high above the literal requirements of external law 
as are the frosty stars of heaven above the murky 
mists of earth. He who drives off the horse to the 
surgeon honestly must be one who would sooner 
cut off his right hand than touch his neighbor's 
spear of grass for any lesser cause. He who will 
tell the truthful lie to the scandalmonger must be 
one who would go to the stake before he would give 
the word or even the look of falsehood to any right- 
minded man who had a right to know the truth for 
which he asks. He who will slay a murderer guilt- 
lessly must be one who would rather, like Socrates, 



112 THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 

die a thousand deaths than betray the slightest 
claim his fellows have upon him. No man may 
break the least of the moral commandments unless 
the spirit that is expressed within the command- 
ment itself bids him break it. And such a break- 
ing is the highest fulfillment. 

This theoretical explanation of moral laws, with 
its justifi-cation of exceptions in extreme cases, is 
absolutely essential to a rational system of ethics. 
Yet it must not blind us to the practically supreme 
and absolute authority of these laws in ordinary 
conduct. These moral laws are, as Professor Dewey 
happily terms them, tools of analysis. They break 
up a complex situation into its essential parts, and 
tell us to what class of acts the proposed act belongs, 
and whether that class of acts is one which we 
ought to do or not. 

The practical man in a case of moral conduct 
asks what class an act belongs to ; and then, hav- 
ing classified it, follows implicitly the dictates of 
the moral law on that class of cases. Gambling, 
stealing, drunkenness, slandering, loafing he will 
recognize at a glance as things to be refrained from, 
in obedience to the laws that condemn them. He 
will not stop to inquire into the grounds of such 
condemnation in each special case. To know the 
ground of the law, however, helps us to classify 
doubtful cases, — as, for instance, whether buying 
stocks on margins is gambling ; whether the spoils 



THE CAREER OF SELF-CONQUEST 113 

system in politics is stealing; whether moderate 
drinking is incipient drunkenness ; whether good- 
natured gossip about our neighbor's failings is slan- 
der ; whether a three months' vacation is loafing, 
and the like. Once properly classified, however, the 
man who is wise will turn over his ordinary conduct 
on these points to the automatic working of habit. 
Habit is the great time-saving device of our moral 
as well as our mental and physical life. To translate 
the moral laws which the race has worked out for 
us into unconscious habits of action is the crowning 
step in the conquest of character. These laws are 
our great moral safeguards. They come to us long 
before we are able to form any theory of their ori- 
gin or authority, and abide with us long after our 
speculations are forgotten. If ethical theory is 
compelled to question their meaning and challenge 
their authority, it does so in the interest of a deeper 
morality, which appeals from the letter of the law 
to the spirit of life of which all laws are the sym- 
bolic expression. 



The Continuity and Contrast of College and 

the World 

He that is not against you is for you. — Luke ix. 50. 
He that is not with me is against me. — Luke xi. 23. 

THE contrast between college life and life in 
the outside world is happily indicated in these 
contrasted texts. In college the lenient law, He that 
is not against you is for you ; in the world outside 
the severe standard, He that is not with me is 
against me, prevails. A moment's reflection on the 
different conditions in college and in the outside 
world will make plain the reason for the different 
laws. 

College life is artificially simple. With the single 
exception of club life, it is the narrowest life a man 
can live. The great realities that condition life in 
the outside world — the care of the aged, the rearing 
of the young, the struggle for daily bread, the strain 
of business, the stress of politics, the weight of pro- 
fessional and administrative responsibility — are 
either entirely absent or present only in artificial 
miniature. Welcome checks for the wealthy, gen- 
erous scholarships for those whose fortune is chiefly 
their own talent and industry, eliminate the fierce 



COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 115 

struggle for existence from this cLarmed circle of 
undergraduate life. Tlie absence of the fair sex re- 
moves at least to a distance the chief source of emo- 
tional interest in real life. Where men touch each 
other only at a few points, such as social intercourse, 
class, college, and society politics, college publica- 
tions, and athletics, the man who can't pass muster 
on these easy terms must be a hopeless case. With 
health, wealth, youth, leisure, choice companionship, 
regular and inspiring but not too difficult tasks, 
and the enthusiasm of great contests, all provided 
and thrown into his lap, a man may indeed be dull, 
selfish, censorious, conceited, cowardly, contempti- 
ble. But if he is, sharp eyes are swift to detect and 
punish him. He is speedily dubbed a " dope " or 
a " stiff " or a " tripe " or a " snob " or a " berry," 
or some other of the grotesque, slangy terms, more 
forcible than elegant, by which college students 
brand the fellows who are sleepy and tactless, irri- 
table and complaining, self-centred and treacherous. 
Thus the man who is cheap, the man who " swipes," 
the man who is swelled-headed, and the man who is 
sandless either gets these obnoxious quahties taken 
out of him in the earlier part of his college course, 
or else is distinctly marked off as a man who is 
against you. Under this summary treatment, almost 
every student sooner or later comes to terms ; and 
by the time Junior year is reached, pretty nearly 
every member of the class has been brought into 



116 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 

line as at least not against you in these cheap forms 
of self-conceit and self-assertion, of courting favor 
or dodging difficulty. When Class Day comes, 
therefore, it finds a group of men who have been 
trained by each other to be wide-awake and tactful, 
genial and courteous, kindly in comments on one an- 
other, generous in small things as well as in great, 
and cheerful when things don't quite suit them : men 
who will give each other their best, and take from 
their fellows nothing they have not fairly earned ; 
men who can lose all thought of themselves in devo- 
tion to common ends, and who will put forth the 
last ounce of energy in them before they will be 
beaten in the game they set out to play, or give up 
the work they '' go in for," or go back on the friends 
whom they love. Having learned not to be for 
themselves, and against you, they are rightly re- 
garded as for you, and counted as friends and good 
fellows for all the rest of your hves. 

Henceforth you take your places in the great 
world of men and women, scholars and toilers, busi- 
ness and politics. The principles which prevail 
there are precisely the same as those which you have 
discovered and enforced on each other here. But 
there is this great difference. Here it is easy to be 
a good fellow ; there it is much harder. Here you 
live so close to each other that bad traits are quickly 
detected and punished ; there they can be concealed 
for a time, and the penalty may be long delayed. 



OF COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 117 

Here the social forces are all tending to make you 
a good fellow ; tliere the dominant forces are work- 
ing the other way. To be a good fellow in college, 
as we have seen, means that you shall give your 
best to your fellows, and take nothing from them 
you do not fairly earn ; that you shall be brotherly 
and self-sacrificing. To do these same four things, 
not in the artificial and sheltered environment of a 
college, toward a little group of congenial and cul- 
tivated men, but in the wider relations of domestic, 
economic, professional, and political life, toward 
men and women, high and low, rich and poor, 
learned and ignorant ; toward all persons in all the 
broad relations of life to give your best, and take 
nothing you do not fairly earn, to be brotherly and 
to be self-sacrificing, — that is what it means in real 
life to be good fellows, gentlemen. Christians. Let 
us consider these traits one by one. 

First : Give your best. When a young man 
graduates he is bound to take one of two courses. 
Either he will look for a place ready-made to fit 
him, or else he will set out to fit himself for a place. 
The economic difference between a cheap man and 
a man who gives his best first comes out there. Ed- 
mond Demolins, a French writer on " Anglo-Saxon 
Superiority : To What it is Due," points out that 
Anglo-Saxon superiority is due to the fact that the 
young Anglo-Saxon at once sets out to make a 
career for himself by his own initiative, originality, 



118 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 

and independence ; while the young Frenchman ex- 
pects his father to provide him with a government 
office, a wife, and a dowry. " Ask a hundred young 
Frenchmen just out of school," he says, " to what 
careers they are inclined ; three quarters of them 
will answer you that they are candidates for govern- 
ment offices." This dependence on " ready-made 
situations, in which advancement is the reward of 
patience rather than of constant effort," with its 
attendant negation of initiative, passive obedience, 
uniformity of opinions and ideas, and absence of 
individuality, he declares to be the open secret of 
French inferiority. To cast about to find a soft 
berth, a good salary, which can be secured by in- 
fluence and held by inertia, is to start out in life a 
cheap man. The true Anglo-Saxon is he who looks 
for a chance somewhere to begin at the bottom, 
master some single department of this great indus- 
trial order, and show to the world that he can do 
that thing better than any other available man ; 
not to get onto the pay-roll of some big corporation, 
or fill a government post which a hundred other 
men could fill just as well, but to prepare himself 
to do something so well that the corporation or the 
government wiU find his services essential to their 
highest efficiency. That is the first mark of a high- 
priced man in the actual life of the world. In pri- 
vate business not to be a parasite, but a sound and 
healthy member of the working whole ; in political 



OF COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 119 

action to support the government, not simply to be 
supported by it, is what it means to fulfill in the 
great outside world the first qualification of a gen- 
tleman and a Christian, which you have learned to 
recognize here in your small student world. 

Second : Take nothing you do not pay for, and 
pay the full price. I will not detain you to speak 
of literal running in debt, nor of passes, or rebates, 
or discounts, or favors gained through family in- 
fluence or professional status or political pull. The 
honest man will have none of them. I speak of 
more vital matters. One half of the great world 
you now enter are women, and they are the better 
haK by far, as all who have known a mother attest. 
The very best thing in the world is a good woman's 
love. You can pay for it with nothing less precious 
than the entire respect and reverence of your own 
heart. rTo receive a woman's love, or even the 
physical symbol of it, and offer in payment merely 
transient and unmeant endearment, or, worse still, 
to offer money, is the meanest form of getting 
something for less than its price to which a man can 
descend. ; I might point out that it is undermining 
the most sacred social institution which generations 
have toiled to evolve ; I might say that it is poison- 
ing life at its source ; I might introduce the loath- 
some details and the cruelty to innocent wives and 
children which the physician so well understands. 
Here to-day I put it on the plain ground you all 



120 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 

appreciate and approve, — on the ground of simple 
honesty and common honor, which scorns to get 
anything under false pretences, and least of all will 
take from a woman her most precious jewel and 
not pay its full price. 

Third : Be brotherly. You remember how dis- 
agreeable it was to have young fellows coming here 
with their heads full of their own family or wealth 
or school achievements or personal importance, and 
how essential it was to give them to understand 
that the university was of quite as much conse- 
quence as they thought themselves to be. When 
you go out into the world, don't make the same 
mistake that these swelled-headed fellows made 
when they came here. Not one man in a thousand 
in this work-a-day world has had the advantages 
you have had. But that is no reason why you 
should hold yourself aloof from these hard-working, 
plain-living brothers of yours. You eat the bread 
the farmer, the ranchman, the butcher, the grocer, 
prepare for you. You live in houses the forester, 
the stone-cutter, the carpenter, the mason, the 
painter, the upholsterer furnish for you. You 
wear the clothing which the shepherd, the plan- 
tation hand, the mill-operative, the shopkeeper, the 
seamstress, the tailor provide for you. You sit by 
the fire the miner, the locomotive engineer, the 
brakeman, the sailor, the teamster has built in 
your grate. Have you yet done anything for them 



OF COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 121 

that is worth as much as these things they are 
daily doing for you ? If not, then look up to them 
with heartfelt gratitude and admiration, as the 
soldier says to the water-carrier in Kipling's line, — 

You 're a better man than I am, Gunga Din. 

When you get your work well in hand, then, 
indeed, you may look on these toiling millions as 
your brothers, provided you go about your work as 
cheerfully and steadily and faithfully and efficiently 
as they on the whole do theirs. But never, never 
shall you look on them with indifference or con- 
descension, n ever you are able to do your work 
exceptionally well, if ever it is given you to occupy 
positions of great influence, then if you are true 
men, with the true instinct of human brotherhood, 
the chief satisfaction you will find in it all will be 
the thought that the efficiency of the corporation 
you control, or the soundness of the professional 
counsel you give, or the beneficence of the public 
policy you carry out, or the justice of the views 
you disseminate, may help to make the laborer's 
work more steady and his wages more fair, his 
street more healthful and his home more happy, 
his government more pure and his lot in life more 
worthy of man. You may or may not enter into 
distinctively settlement and philanthropic work. 
Valuable as these things are, they can do little 
more than alleviate symptoms. Even that every 



122 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 

man ought to engage in who can. The solution, 
however, of our great social problem must come 
through just such well-trained, energetic, ambitious 
fellows as you, who get professional skill, corporate 
wealth, political power in their hands, and then use 
it, not, like the first souls Dante discovered in 
hell, " for themselves," but to give every worker 
his chance of steady employment and his fair share 
of the worth of his work, and to make possible for 
the working man and working woman a domestic, 
social, intellectual, moral, and spiritual life that is 
really worth living. The man who goes into life 
with such a sense of brotherhood and an earnest 
desire to add his little mite to the common stock of 
human welfare will not be much troubled with the 
sense of his own self-importance. 

Fourth : Be self-sacrificing. Hegel tells us in 
one of his profoundest passages that in the eye 
of fate all action is guilt, for it is necessarily 
one-sided, — for the sake of one set of interests 
it sacrifices another set of interests equally vital. 
You must sacrifice; you must suffer. The great 
claims we have been considering and the clamor of 
our petty appetites and passing passions never co- 
incide, but are in perpetual warfare. You may side 
with the petty private good, which circumstances 
and companions are never wanting to reinforce ; 
but in order to do that you sacrifice the large social 
claims, the wide area of human good. In doing so 



OF COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 123 

you array these larger powers against you. They 
visit you with disease, degradation, disgrace, dis- 
aster, death. The best part of you suffers ; the 
suffering is imposed upon you by alien and hostile 
forces. You live the life of an outlaw, and you die 
the death of a slave. 

Or you may serve the larger good, and live in 
loyalty to the claims of human brotherhood and 
the social law of God. Then it will be the lower 
and the lesser side of you on which the suffering 
falls, and even that will be freely chosen and cheer- 
fully endured for the sake of the larger good. To 
suffer in this way is to be free and strong and brave. 
In the language of the Second Epistle of Peter, it 
is to suffer, not as an evil-doer, but as a Christian. 

Start where you will in the moral world, if you 
follow principles to their conclusions they always 
lead you up to Christ. He touched life so deeply, 
so broadly, and so truly that all brave, generous 
living is summed up in him. Starting with the code 
you have here worked out for yourselves, translat- 
ing it into positive terms, and enlarging it to the 
dimensions of the world you are about to enter, 
your code becomes simply a fresh interpretation of 
the meaning of the Christian life. All that we have 
been saying has its counterpart in that great life 
of his. He gave his best ; and how good and bene- 
ficent it was ! A few years of kindly ministry to 
human needs as he found them, in the street and 



124 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 

in the home, on the highway and in the temple ! 
A few discourses to unappreciative crowds gathered 
on the hillside or by the lake-shore, with patient 
interpretation to a little group of learners, only 
slightly less dull and slow than the masses whence 
they came ! Yet what countless homes have been 
made happier, what a mighty mass of misery has 
been lifted, what priceless blessings have been con- 
ferred by institutions his spirit has informed, what 
splendid nobility of character has been inspired in 
millions of his followers, through love to him who 
in this brief, simple life in an obscure Roman pro- 
vince gave to the world his best ! To be for him 
in this twentieth century means that in all the com- 
plexity of business, political, and social life, whether 
it is asked or declined, whether it is appreciated or 
criticised, whether it is admired or condemned, you 
give to the world your best. 

He took nothing he did not pay for. To minis- 
ter rather than to be ministered unto was his aim. 
He had not where to lay his head. The world was 
his debtor. The extreme simplicity of life which 
he found incidental to the life of a teacher in an 
ancient oriental community is by no means en- 
joined upon you. Large work in these days gen- 
erally requires considerable of what Aristotle called 
" furniture of fortune." The banker, the railroad 
president, the corporation counsel, the mayor can- 
not do their best work on the terms on which the 



OF COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 125 

foxes and the birds of the air do theirs. But the 
principle of Jesus, the principle that no poor man 
shall work the harder, no woman shall be sadder, no 
good institution shall be weaker, and no bad cus- 
tom more prevalent, for aught that we have done 
or left undone ; that principle holds for us as firmly 
as it did when Jesus first proclaimed and practiced 
it. So to five is to be for Christ. To take from 
man or woman, private corporation or government 
oJBfice, anything for which you do not give a full 
equivalent, is to be against Christ to-day. 

He said and did nothing of himself, nor for his 
own glory. He simply said and did what the situ- 
ation called for, and tact, sympathy, friendliness, 
and brotherhood suggested. The only greatness he 
encouraged in his followers was the greatness of 
service. To be for Christ is to have the sense that 
the lowliest who are affected one way or the other 
by your action are, unconsciously and indirectly 
and incidentally for the most part, but yet genu- 
inely and substantially, made a little richer, wiser, 
healthier, happier, by what you are doing. 

He suffered. If you put aside the veils of inter- 
pretation theologians have drawn over that simple 
fact, his suffering speaks for itself. He had the 
choice that comes to all. On the one side he saw 
personal popularity within the narrow circle of his 
few chosen friends and admirers, yet with it the 
certainty that his name and his work would die 



126 THE CONTINUITY AND CONTRAST 

with him, — leaving the national sins unrebuked, 
the national religion unreformed, the world's sin- 
fulness unexposed, the true life of man and the 
great love of God unrevealed. On the other side 
he saw his work put on a world-wide basis, his 
message and spirit bequeathed to mankind for all 
time ; but for himself, the envy of pontifical cliques 
and the hatred of political rings ; the scourge, the 
thorn-crown, and the cross. The latter he cheer- 
fully chose. 

To be for him in our day is to be for the costly 
right against the profitable wrong ; for unpopular 
truth against unanimous error ; for patient, plod- 
ding details of duty, against specious and tawdry 
abstractions ; for the exposed frontier of progress, 
against stagnation intrenched in tradition. 

The college, like the Christian home, is so or- 
ganized that mere non-resistance, mere acceptance 
of the influences that surround you, tends to make 
one a gentleman and a Christian. Even if a man 
inclines to drop below the standard which the col- 
lege community sets up, keen eyes are on him, and 
kindly criticism promptly calls attention to his de- 
fects. He that is not against you is for you. 

In the world the other law prevails. The ten- 
dencies are strong against the higher life. There 
non-resistance is destruction. For in the complex- 
ity of social life the average man does not see the 
bearing of these baser traits as you see them among 



OF COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 127 

yourselves here. A man can palm off poor work, 
and get something for nothing ; he can put on airs 
in public and be a coward at heart, and deceive 
the world for a time. In offices and stores, in rail- 
way trains and hotel corridors, in factories and 
mines, in court-rooms and lobbies, the pressure of 
the environment is not up, but down ; not toward 
the just, generous, brave, brotherly life, but toward 
selfish indulgence and gain at no matter what cost 
of cruel injustice to the people who afford you 
amusement or out of whom your money is made. 

The Christ of the twentieth century is not ex- 
actly the same as the sectarian Christ of the nine- 
teenth, or the dogmatic Christ of the sixteenth, or 
the official Christ of the thirteenth, or the meta- 
physical Christ of the fourth, or even the Christ 
after the flesh, which Paul had already outgrown 
in the first century. The Christ of the twentieth 
century is preeminently the social Christ, and is 
greater than all that has gone before. He is the 
Christ who will give of his best to the world, and 
take no more than he gives ; the Christ who calls 
the poorest his brother, and will endure aU things 
for his sake. 

There is not a man among you who wishes to be 
against such a glorious Christ as that : who would 
get his living or any part of it out of the world 
without giving at least as good as he gets, who 
would make the lot of the world's toilers the harder 



128 COLLEGE AND THE WORLD 

by shifting his own load onto them. Yet that is 
precisely what you will find yourselves doing, un- 
less you are positively and earnestly for Christ. 
The only way to escape it is to give yourselves to 
him in entire consecration as you now go out into 
life ; and then as opportunity offers, whether in 
Catholic cathedral or Methodist chapel, whether in 
the crowded streets of noisy cities or alone upon 
the prairie under the silent stars, to renew day by 
day your devotion to him, and the just, generous, 
brotherly, brave social service for which the Christ 
of the twentieth century stands. 



VI 

Tlie More Excellent Way 

Covet earnestly the best gifts : and yet show I unto you a more 
excellent way. — 1 Cor. xii. 31. 

MY theme is not the familiar and funda- 
mental distinction between good and evil. 
Taking that for granted, my text proceeds to sub- 
divide the good into degrees ; contrasting the good 
and the more excellent. 

I might set forth the difference between the two 
ways by abstract definition, and say that one is sub- 
jective, the other objective ; one introspective, the 
other self-forgetf ul ; one abnormal and artificial, 
the other healthy and natural ; one cold and cal- 
culating, the other hearty and generous. I might 
picture the self-conscious struggle for personal ex- 
cellence, with its morbid conscientiousness, its per- 
petual alternation of hope and despair, its frequent 
self-examinations, its rigorous, self-imposed exac- 
tions, its close and stifling atmosphere of self-cen- 
tred solicitude ; and over against all that portray 
the cheerful confidence, the exulting eagerness, the 
glorious liberty to be found in that more excellent 
way which leads along the sunlit heights of ardu- 
ous endeavor for the love of God and for the help 
of man. 



130 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 

Verbal definition and description, however, give 
us at best only faint images, while what we want is, 
if possible, to grasp the idea itself. Now an idea, 
if true and real, always has more than one em- 
bodiment, and crops out in many spheres. Uni- 
versality of application is the test of the truth of 
an idea. Let us then try first to discover our idea 
in the more familiar spheres of every-day affairs. 
If we can find it in the gymnasium and study, we 
shall be all the better able to apprehend it when 
we come back to the chapel. 

There are two ways of physical development: 
one good, the other more excellent. One way says. 
Covet earnestly the best physical gifts. Aim di- 
rectly at the cultivation of health, strength, and 
symmetry. Follow out minutely the directions laid 
down in the Handbook of Developing Exercises. 
Keep the eye constantly upon the lines of the An- 
thropometric Chart. Test your development by 
frequent examinations and measurements. 

This method is good. It is infinitely better than 
no method. For students, for men and women 
whose occupations confine them within doors the 
greater part of the day, this is the best method 
available. For you, as you are situated here, it is 
the essential and indispensable condition of main- 
taining health and increasing strength. 

Yet for those who can avail themselves of it 
there is a more excellent way. Forgetting all 



THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 131 

about muscles and their measurements, the Hand- 
book and its directions, the gymnasium and its 
apparatus, the man who follows the more excellent 
way will live an outdoor life. He will hunt and 
fish, fell trees and make hay, build fences and lay 
stone walls, plough and sow and reap and thresh. 
The woman who follows the better way will walk, 
skate, row, ride horseback, climb mountains, bathe 
in the surf, do housework, have a garden of her 
own, and take care of plants and animals. 

The first method gives muscle ; the second gives 
muscle and nerve both. One gives strength ; the 
other gives vigor, vitality, and endurance. One 
produces for the time a great many points of spe- 
cial excellence ; the other builds up and holds in 
reserve a store of energy lasting for years, and con- 
vertible into any form which the occasion may re- 
quire. 

Thus the objective method, which loses thought 
of self -development in the pursuit of definite exter- 
nal ends, not only accomplishes its immediate aims, 
but at the same time gives a physical development 
compared with which the development of the mere 
pupil of gymnastics is in every essential respect 
inferior. 

There are two ways in the intellectual life, — one 
good as far as it goes, the other more excellent. 
The first way is the way of intellectual ambition. 
It says, " Covet earnestly the best intellectual 



132 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 

gifts." It seeks culture for the sake of having it, 
and strives for intellectual accomplishments for 
the pride it has in their possession. It studies for 
rank, and is covetous of academic degrees and 
honors. 

Now, this is not altogether bad. As compared 
with idleness and indifference, it marks a great 
advance. At certain stages in student life this in- 
tellectual ambition ought to be stimulated and en- 
couraged. 

Yet, sooner or later, every student who is to be- 
come a scholar must enter upon a more excellent 
way, as far above mere intellectual ambition as 
that is above indolence and mental sloth. In the 
course of your studies has there ever appeared to 
you a vision of one or another of the sisterhood 
of sciences — Philology, Mathematics, History, 
Chemistry, or Literature — claiming you as her 
servant by the divine right of the affinity of her 
truths for your mind ? And, in response, has there 
stirred within you a burning desire to have the 
vision become to you an abiding presence, a per- 
petual inspiration ? Have you felt eager and glad 
to devote your life to making the vision of that 
truth first of all distinct and clear to your own 
eyes, and then to become the interpreter of its 
majesty and beauty to the world ? And have you 
so surrendered yourself to this high and holy ser- 
vice of the truth that all concern as to what of 



THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 133 

honor or neglect, fame or obscurity, wealth or pov- 
erty, may come to you in consequence of your 
scholarly pursuits, is lost in the fullness of joy 
which the nearer and clearer communion with your 
science gives from day to day ? 

If you have thus seen and felt truth's compelling 
charm, and if you have found out the delight of 
studying for truth's sake, then you know that he 
that is least in the kingdom of such genuine scholar- 
ship is greater than the greatest of those who strive 
to climb to distinction on the ladder of intellectual 
ambition. 

If you have seen no such vision and responded to 
no such call, then indeed you may be useful and 
honorable in other spheres and relationships of 
life ; you may do good service in the lower grades 
of teaching ; you may know many things and win 
much fame for your cleverness ; but the highest 
spheres of intellectual life, with their " calm pleas- 
ures and majestic pains," must remain for you for- 
ever closed. 

It makes all the difference in the world — intel- 
lectually it is a question of health and life or dis- 
ease and death — whether you find this better way 
or not. The student who is animated by mere ambi- 
tion does not hold out long after leaving college. 
The actual world has no ranking system, no scheme 
of so much honor for so much toil, no food pre- 
pared at stated intervals for intellectual vanity to 



134 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 

feed upon. Truth herself, however, to her true fol- 
lowers then becomes most sweet and sustaining 
when artificial stimulus is withdrawn. 

Hence the one way renders the student proud, 
haughty, and exacting. The other way keeps the 
student meek, modest, and gentle. The follower of 
the one grows sour and bitter as the dragging years 
bring less and less of recognition. The disciple of 
the other grows sweet and cheerful as the busy, 
eager days bring fresh food for thought and in- 
quiry. 

The one is boastful of what he has done and can 
do, but in time of real trial he is found wanting. 
The other is unconscious and distrustful of his 
powers ; but put him face to face with concrete dif- 
ficulty and duty, and he is equal to the task. 

If now we have formed an idea of the distinc- 
tion between the good and the more excellent way 
in physical and intellectual pursuits, we are pre- 
pared to appreciate the difference between the two 
ways of spiritual life. 

One method says : Covet earnestly the best spir- 
itual gifts. Be anxious about your individual soul's 
salvation. Make sure of an abundant entrance into 
heaven. Cultivate assiduously the Christian graces. 
Examine yourself frequently to see whether you are 
making satisfactory progress. 

According to this method the fundamental ques- 
tion is, " What shall I do to be saved ? " The start- 



THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 135 

ing-point is the man himself ; ^d God is thought 
of primarily as the instrumentality by which this 
salvation is to be wrought out. To be sure, this 
method includes the thought and the desire that 
other individuals must be saved according to the 
same plan. Herein lies its missionary motive. And 
a powerful motive it has been, and noble is the 
work it has accomplished. 

Indeed, it is to the strong infusion of this way 
of thinking, permeating the religious life of New 
England for a quarter of a millennium as the salt 
permeates the waters of the sea, that we owe what 
is grandest and noblest in our life at home, and 
what is most potent and beneficent in the influence 
of New England over other sections of our own 
country and on foreign missionary ground. A full 
and generous recognition of the goodness of this 
way, however, ought not to prevent us from seeing 
and pursuing a way more excellent, if such there 
be. 

What, then, is this more excellent way ? It is 
the devotion of heart and life to God's loving will, 
revealed in Christ, whose object is the well-being 
of mankind. 

Wherein does this differ from the previous way ? 
Its starting-point is God and his eternal love, not 
man and his lost condition. Its characteristic ques- 
tion is not that of the terrified Philippian jailer, 
who, in his confusion and despair, and on the point 



136 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 

of suicide, cried out, " Sirs, what must I do to be 
saved? " That was the question of a man of whom 
we know nothing more than that he and his house- 
hold were baptized and made happy. 

That is good ; but the question characteristic of 
the more excellent way is the question of the Apos- 
tle himself, who, when the vision of the Christ came 
to him, exclaimed, " Who art thou. Lord ? " This 
is the question of the man whose conversion carried 
with it the conversion of the Western world. 

Not anxious solicitude to make the best possible 
provision for self here and hereafter, but eager ear- 
nestness to know God and to serve him now and 
evermore, — this is the starting-point in the more 
excellent way. Not the salvation of self, not the 
cultivation of private graces and personal gifts, but 
the knowledge of God and the service of our fellow- 
men, God's children, is its end and aim. Not our 
own blessedness as a consequence of God's special 
favor to us as individuals, but the greatness of 
God's love and the joy we may have in sharing 
with God this universal love of his to all his chil- 
dren, — this is the motive and inspiration of this 
better sort of religious life. 

The better way is consistent with the possession 
of the highest gifts. Indeed, it calls for them, it 
uses them, it makes the most of them. But it seeks 
them not for their own sake, not for the sake of the 
satisfaction the individual takes in having them, 



THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 137 

not for the promise they give of future happiness, 
but for the worth they have as instruments for 
expressing and realizing the glorious love of God 
toward all his children. Yet while this more ex- 
cellent way makes the best and highest use of all 
religious gifts, it is still something more and higher 
than any or all these gifts. One may have all faith 
and all orthodoxy ; one may be active in prayer- 
meeting and Sabbath-school ; one may engage in 
charitable and missionary work ; one may be first 
in all these things, and at the same time be last 
in the identification of heart and life with God's 
loving will toward all his children, which is the 
essence of the better way. 

Wherever, underneath our church attendance, 
our Bible reading, our prayers, our contributions, 
there lurks a secret sense that in some way or other 
these are things which we must do, conditions we 
must fulfill, if we are to be saved, there the charac- 
teristic excellence of the purest, noblest Christian- 
ity is marred, defaced, and obscured by slavish bond- 
age, by hard legalism, by ignoble fear. Wherever 
duty is done, as in the case of Aurora Leigh's 

dutiful aimt. 

As if fearful that God's saints 
Would look down suddenly and say, " Herein 
You missed a point, I think," 

the Christ-likeness of such Christianity is altogether 
wanting. The more excellent way rises above and 



138 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 

beyond these "miserable aims tliat end in self." 
Just as the opportunity to do a daring deed calls 
out the strong man's strength, with no conscious 
deliberation whether he wants exercise or not ; just 
as the inherent charm of truth draws to itself the 
scholar's mind by a force of such resistless majesty 
and might that all the proffered supports of per- 
sonal advantage and ambition are brushed contempt- 
uously aside as hindrances rather than helps, — so 
to the soul destined to enter the more excellent 
way of the religious life there comes a sense of the 
high calling of God in Christ Jesus. 

Those grand old words, " calling and election," 
have a meaning, — lost and obscured and much mis- 
understood indeed, but well worth our effort to find 
out again. God's call may come in many ways. 
The reading of the Gospel story, to such as, amid 
the jargon of interpretation that clouds it in our 
day, can read it in its simplicity and purity, — the 
simple reading of that story is enough to call a 
chosen soul to God. This Son of Man, going about 
among his fellow-men to do them good, healing the 
sick and warning the wayward, robbing death of 
its terrors and giving to the wedding feast a pre- 
ternatural joy, doing the grandest work of revo- 
lutionizing the spiritual life of a nation and of 
the world with childlike modesty and meekness 
and performing the meanest services in the royal 
majesty of love, always on terms of friendly human 



THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 139 

helpfulness with those whose character and lives 
most needed it, and pouring scorn and contempt on 
the pretentious affectations of religion, making his 
life a constant ministry, his death a crowning sac- 
rifice for the redemption of the race, — has the read- 
ing of that sublime story ever made you feel that 
there is portrayed a life so noble, an aim so high, 
a spirit so holy, a work so grand and glorious, that 
apart from it you can conceive no life, no aim, no 
work worthy of being cherished? If the story of 
our Lord's life and death has this supreme attrac- 
tion for you, this is God's call to you. 

The occasion of God's call may be the instituted 
worship of the church, the words of a preacher, the 
example of devout father or mother, friend or neigh- 
bor, the silent meditation of the soul in seeming 
solitude. In some way or other, there comes to every 
soul destined to walk in the more excellent way a 
conception of the nobility, the glory, the supreme 
worthiness, the absolute divineness of that ministry 
to the highest well-being of man which Jesus per- 
fectly embodied and in which pure Christianity con- 
sists. This conception of the supreme worthiness 
and attractiveness of the Christian ideal, which 
comes in some form or other to each of God's chosen 
ones, — this is the call of God. 

The sense that this life of loving cooperation 
with God and Christ in serving your fellow-men, 
God's children, is the true life, the real life, the only 



140 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 

life in which you can find freedom and joy, the 
scope for action and the secret of repose, — this 
conviction wrought within you is the evidence that 
you are one of God's chosen ones. And to rise and 
obey that call, actually to repent of and renounce 
all lower and less noble aims and purposes, and to 
devote heart and life to the doing of that loving 
will of God, in Christ-like service of your fellows, 
— this is the way to " make your calling and elec- 
tion sure." 

This disposition to put God first rather than sec- 
ond, this tendency to find in God's eternal love in 
Jesus Christ the all-sufficient motive to Christian 
conduct and character, in private and in public, 
in the individual and in the church, at home and 
abroad, — this is the theological foundation on 
which the more excellent way of religious thought 
and life must rest. 

Our fathers brought with them to this country 
the phrases of this prof ounder creed. How came it 
about, then, that we have so far drifted away from 
it ? The trouble was that the children gradually 
forgot the simple and obvious meaning of these 
terms. God's call came to mean something myste- 
rious, something exclusive, something to be waited 
for. Election came to be viewed as an arbitrary 
transaction performed ages ago somewhere in the 
skies. 

Such nonsense as that, shrewd Yankee common 



THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 141 

sense rightly rejected. And so we came to have 
here in New England a theology which starts with 
the powers of the human will, and appeals to 
human seK-interest, instead of the theology which 
starts with the eternal, redeeming love of God re- 
vealed in Christ, and appeals to the all-powerful 
attractiveness which this Divine Ideal has for as 
many as are able to appreciate and receive him. 

To recover the plain meaning of these deep 
truths, and to restore the eternal love of God in 
Jesus Christ to its rightful place as the supreme 
and sujficient motive to , Christian life and work, is 
the theological problem of our day ; the indispen- 
sable prerequisite to any considerable and perma- 
nent advance in the more excellent way of practical 
religious life. 

Li conclusion, let us consider two points of su- 
periority which the method of devotion to God's 
loving will for all his children has over the method 
of solicitude about the saving of our individual 
souls. The two chief points of superiority are gen- 
tleness and strength. 

By gentleness we mean that quality which makes 
easy adjustment with others, which springs from a 
delicate appreciation of others' feelings, which al- 
ways takes into account the point of view of others, 
and so renders the individual's conduct not the 
arbitrary self-assertion of his own separate will, 
but the resultant of all the wills that are rightfully 



142 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 

concerned in his conduct and are affected by it. 
Hence gentleness toward others is kind, long-suf- 
fering, not easily provoked ; because the interests 
of others, their points of view, their trials, their 
temptations, are ever present to its thought. To- 
ward itself, gentleness is not puffed up, does not 
behave itself unseemly, vaunteth not itself ; simply 
because it has something better to do than always 
to be thinking about itself. 

The whole secret of gentleness, you see, lies in 
this : that its thought is not concentrated upon it- 
self, but is bestowed freely on others. Hence the 
coveting of the best gifts and solicitude about the 
present state and future prospects of our individ- 
ual souls beget a habit and temper of mind which 
is the direct opposite of the habit and temper on 
which gentleness depends. A certain hardness, 
harshness, severity, and readiness in condemning 
others; a corresponding pride, self-sufficiency, in- 
sistence on one's own forms of worship, modes of 
statement, and hopes of heaven as better than every- 
body's else, is the logical outcome of this exag- 
geration of the subjective side of the religious 
life. 

On the other hand, that method which appre- 
hends the love of God in Christ for all mankind, 
and eagerly devotes itself to cooperation with that 
loving will because it feels and knows that this 
is the highest, noblest, truest way of life, — this 



THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 143 

method falls in with that very manner of thinking 
on which, as we have seen, gentleness depends. If 
we can learn to think of the people whom we meet 
in some measure as the loving Father thinks of 
them, pitying their infirmities and failings, ready 
to pardon their sins at the first dawn of penitence, 
entering with sympathetic appreciation into their 
joys and sorrows, their hopes and fears, and seek- 
ing for them in everything their highest good, we 
should thereby acquire the secret of that gentleness 
which rejoices with those that do rejoice and weeps 
with those that weep; which is so glad in others' 
prosperity that there is no room for envy, and so 
sorry for others' shortcomings that there is no 
place left for rejoicing in their iniquity; which is 
so intent on others' good that there is no time left 
for a seeking of its own advantage, and no energy 
left to spend in feeding and fattening its own sepa- 
rate selfhood. To see in every fellow-being a child 
of the heavenly Father, and to stand ready by every 
appropriate word and deed to manifest the Father's 
loving regard for each child of his, irrespective of 
the wealth or poverty, the high or low degree, the 
attractiveness or the uncongeniality, the friendli- 
ness or enmity in which this child of the Father 
comes to you, — this is at once the secret of Chris- 
tian gentleness and the characteristic of the more 
excellent way of Christian life. 

The other point of superiority of the more excel- 



144 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 

lent way is strength ; strength both for endurance 
and for work. 

Now, both methods have strength. Neither is 
altogether weak. Compared with the mere child of 
nature, the Stoic, the Abstract Idealist, the Puri- 
tan, the man who covets the best gifts, the man 
who, in one form or another, sets up a standard of 
what his own individual soul must attain, — that 
man is a man of mighty strength. And yet there 
are elements of weakness in this type of character 
from which the more excellent way makes one free. 

What, then, is strength of character? Strength 
is the ability to make one's outward act the ex- 
pression and realization of one's inward purpose. 
Hence a man's strength depends ultimately on the 
purpose which he cherishes, and is proportioned 
to the length and breadth and depth of that pur- 
pose. The man without a purpose is utterly weak, 
the sport of circumstances, the football of society. 
The man of limited purpose is strong within the 
limits which his purpose embraces. The highest 
strength, however, goes with a purpose wide and 
comprehensive enough to embrace the whole of 
life. Coveting the best gifts, self-perfection, the 
seeking of salvation, is a comparatively broad 
purpose. It is much broader and higher than the 
pursuit of wealth, fame, or knowledge ; and conse- 
quently it makes a stronger man than any of these 
motives. 



THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 145 

Yet it has its limitations. Put your Stoic or 
your salvation-seeker, — for their attitude is essen- 
tially the same, except where salvation is thought 
of as future happiness, in which case the salvation- 
seeker must rank not with the Stoics, but with the 
Epicureans, — put this type of character in a place 
where there is no chance of making converts to 
his views, compel him to associate with stupid and 
uninteresting people, subject him to the vexations 
and irritations of a life of obscure drudgery, expose 
him to the opposition and enmity of evil men. He 
will not give up the fight, but he will draw into 
himself, and limit the contest to the inner citadel 
of his own mind. Trials he will use as occasions 
for the development of fortitude and the exercise 
of faith. Vexations will be accepted as a discipline 
in patience. Injury and abuse will be welcomed 
as affording occasion for growth in meekness and 
resignation. Wrong and evil will afford opportu- 
nity for forbearance and forgiveness. And losses 
and privations will be hailed as helps to self-denial 
and self-conquest. 

That there is a good deal of strength of character 
involved in taking the world in this way we all 
admit. And yet it strikes us, after all, as forced, 
imnatural, and artificial. This sort of talk reminds 
us always of the boy who whistles when he goes 
through the cemetery at night to keep his courage 
up. Strength there is ; but it is not sufficient to. 



146 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 

gain a thorough mastery over life, and to maintain 
an easy and permanent supremacy. It is forever 
on the rack of exertion, and the exhausting efforts 
it is compelled to make in order to maintain itself 
betray the presence of weakness and distrust. 

Very different is the strength afforded by the 
more excellent way. He who can see in every 
sphere God's loving will, and finds his joy in the 
doing of that will, never can be placed in circum- 
stances of which he is not the perfect master. 
Poverty and obscurity, drudgery and toil, no less 
than wealth, fame, leisure, and publicity, afford 
abundant opportunity for the doing of the Father's 
vrill. 

His loving-kindness includes the unthankful and 
the evil, as well as the grateful and the good ; and 
toward the one class the will of God can be done 
by us just as effectively, just as thoroughly, just as 
cheerfully and gladly, as toward the other. People 
may come to us with enmity and hate, with treachery 
and malice ; but that need not prevent us from 
finding our peace and joy in doing God's will of 
love and kindness toward them. 

You can never be placed in circumstances so 
unfavorable, you can never be brought in contact 
with a person so mean and hateful, that this devo- 
tion to the loving will of God as applied to those 
circumstances and that person will not give you 
strength to do the right, true, noble, loving act; 



THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 14T 

and so to overcome evil with good. This better 
way is not content with grimly holding its own 
within the contracted citadel of self. It goes out 
on every occasion to conquer the world by righteous- 
ness and love. Its strength is not absorbed in per- 
petual self-defense. It is ever aggressive, and gives 
you power to love your enemies, to bless them that 
curse you, and to pray for them that despitefully 
use you and persecute you. God's loving will for 
all his children, as it is revealed to us in Christ, 
taken up as the substance and aim of the individual's 
personal will, is the secret of this highest strength, 
the strength that beareth all things, believeth all 
things, hopeth all things, endureth all things ; that 
never fails of doing righteously, joyfully, lovingly, 
successfully, whatever it undertakes ; that, in con- 
flict with the worst that mahce and spite and 
wrong and hate can do, is able not only to abide 
invincible, but to come off more than conqueror. 

Every great institution has its own type of 
thought and life. From every meeting-point of 
human souls radiate far and wide influences benign 
and helpful in proportion to the excellence of the 
life which animates the central source. 

In its earlier days, our country has been blessed 
with noble institutions devoted to the education of 
women. They were on a lower intellectual level 
than the college ; and their religious life moved 
more largely on what by contrast we are compelled 



148 THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 

to call the lower or self-conscious plane. Yet their 
influence for good, intellectually and spiritually, 
upon our American life and in missionary work in 
foreign lands, has been incalculable. 

The colleges for women have, for the most part, 
their career still before them. Intellectually, they 
mark an immense advance over the academies and 
seminaries which preceded them. May we not hope 
and believe that, with the rise and growth of these 
colleges, there shall be given to our land a type of 
piety at once higher and healthier, more gentle and 
more strong ? The world looks to you for a religious 
life which, without morbidness, shall be intense and 
earnest ; without sentimentality, shall be winsome 
and attractive ; without weakness, shall be mild and 
gentle ; and, without bigotry, shall be robust and 
strong. 

You cannot rise to the high level of these demands 
by the method of self-seeking in religious things. 
Eelying on that method alone, there will be an un- 
healthiness, an unpracticalness, an unreality and 
emptiness about your religious life painfully sug- 
gestive of the sounding brass and the tinkling 
cymbal, and mournfully prompting the sad con- 
fession, "All this profiteth me nothing, and I 
myself am nothing." 

Seek not, then, merely to save your own souls. 
Seek first of all to know God in Jesus Christ, and 
to be known of him. And then strive that in and 



THE MORE EXCELLENT WAY 149 

througli your lives and labors, your words and 
deeds, your powers and your opportunities, the 
loving will of God, revealed in Christ, may have 
expression and fulfillment in the renovating of 
human lives, the gladdening of human hearts, the 
bettering of society, and the redemption of the race. 
Thus, walking in the more excellent way of self- 
devotion to the Divine Father's loving will for his 
human children, you shall have true fellowship with 
our great Elder Brother, whose person and life 
and work are the full and perfect incarnation of 
this better way ; and, in losing the life of separate 
selfhood, you shall find the life of eternal blessed- 
ness which is hid with Christ in God. 



VII 

The Sacrifices of a College Man 

And David longed, and said, Oh that one would give me water 
to drink of the well of Bethlehem, which is by the gate ! And the 
three mighty men brake through the host of the Philistines, and 
drew water out of the well of Bethlehem, that was by the gate, 
and took it, and brought it to David: but he would not drink 
thereof, but poured it out unto the Lord. And he said. Be it far 
from me, Lord, that I should do this : shall I drink the blood 
of the men that went in jeopardy of their lives ? therefore he would 
not drink of it. — 2 Samuel xxiii. 15-17. 

AMID the rough realities of Cripple Creek or 
Klondike one often sees gleams of heroism 
for the like of which, amid the refined convention- 
alities of Fifth Avenue or Beacon Street, one would 
look long in vain. Civilization and culture, indeed, 
have a heroism of their own ; but it is modest and 
retiring, and it takes a practiced eye to discern the 
face of it behind the veil. In primitive communi- 
ties, on the contrary, virtue and vice alike stand 
out so plain that he who runs may read. This text 
relates a scene from the lives of the outlawed ad- 
herents of an outlaw chief. We must not idealize 
these men because their deeds have been enshrined 
in Holy Writ. In fact, the Scripture record, 
rightly read, permits no pious illusions as to the 
sort of men who gathered in this camp. Here is 
the list : Every one that was in distress, and every 



THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 151 

one that was in debt, and every one that was dis- 
contented, gathered themselves unto David; and 
he was captain over them : the very classes, you 
perceive, who flock to the standard of a Catiline or 
a Coxey. Yet out of the rude camp of these rough 
men there flashes forth the essential splendor of all 
chivalry and all nobility. The chief longs for a 
drink of the water of the well which used to quench 
his childhood's thirst, but which is now within the 
lines of the Philistine camp. It is a mere passing 
whim, a bit of human sentiment. It is a wish, not 
a will ; a yearning, not a command. Yet, to gratify 
that whimsical wish, that sentimental longing, three 
mighty men cut their way through the hostile lines, 
and at the risk of their lives bring back the wished- 
for water. Then comes David's great response. He 
will not drink the water, but pours it out unto the 
Lord. " And he said, Be it far from me, O Lord, 
that I should do this : shall I drink the blood of 
the men that went in jeopardy of their lives ? there- 
fore he would not drink of it." To give one's Hfe 
is a noble thing. To recognize the sacredness of 
the gift, and to receive it worthily, is a higher, 
rarer form of nobleness. It is by this high stand- 
ard that I invite you to measure yourselves. The 
sacredness of the things that are bought with hu- 
man life, and the way a true man treats them, — 
that is my theme. 

You all admire David for refusing to drink the 



152 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 

life-blood of Ms friends. You would despise him 
liad lie drank it. You all feel sure that you would 
have done as he did, in the same circumstances. 
Well, admiration at long range is good. But I must 
press home the harder question. What are you do- 
ing in actual conditions which involve the same 
essential principle? This simple story from the 
crude conditions of primitive warfare is to serve as 
a clue to the intricate labyrinth of modern social 
life. For these modern social conditions are ever 
offering to us the life-blood of our fellows ; and the 
souls are rare that have the heroism to put the 
costly cup away, still rarer the souls who combine 
with this heroism the wisdom to make of this pre- 
cious cup an acceptable offering to the Lord. Let 
us, then, apply this principle to four aspects of our 
life, — wealth, pleasure, politics, faith. 

First, Wealth. Do you realize how much of hu- 
man life there is stored up in what we eat and wear 
and spend and use ? Food and raiment, fire and 
light, shelter and rest, are bought for us by the 
exposure of the lone shepherd on the mountain-side, 
the weary weaver at her loom, the weather-beaten 
sailor before the mast, the engineer driving his 
train against the storm, the miner in the bowels of 
the earth, the woodsman in the depths of the forest, 
the fisherman off the foggy banks, the plowman in 
the monotonous furrow, the cook drudging in the 
kitchen, the washerwoman bending over the tub, 



THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 153 

and the countless host of artisans and teamsters and 
common laborers who form the broad, firm base on 
which our civilization rests. 

Because of this high human cost of material 
goods, all waste is wickedness, all ostentation is dis- 
grace, all luxury that is not redeemed by uses to 
be explained later is criminal. The food or raiment 
that you waste is simply so much human toil and 
sacrifice which you by your wastefulness render 
null and void. The wealth and state you ostenta- 
tiously display simply show the world how much of 
the vitality of other men and women you burn up 
in order to keep your poor self going. To boast of 
riches, to take pride in luxury, is as though an en- 
gine should boast of the quantity of coal it could 
consimae, regardless of work accomplished; as 
though a farm should be proud of the fertilizer 
spread upon it, regardless of the crop raised in re- 
turn. What is the real nature of the idle rich? 
Precisely what do they amount to in the world ? 
To eat the bread that other men have toiled to 
plant and reap and transport and cook and serve ; 
to wear the silk and woolen that other women have 
spun and woven and cut and sewed ; to lie in a 
couch that other hands have spread, and under a 
roof that other arms have reared ; not that alone 
— for we all do as much — but to consume these 
things upon themselves with no sense of gratitude 
and fellowship toward the toiling men and women 



154 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 

who bring these gifts ; with no strenuous effort to 
give back to them something as valuable and pre- 
cious as that which they have given to us ; that is 
the meanness and selfishness and sin and shame of 
wealth that is idle and irresponsible. Against riches 
as such no sane man has a word to say. Against 
rich men who are idle and irresponsible, against 
rich women who are ungrateful and unserviceable, 
the moral insight cries out in righteous indignation, 
and brands them as parasites, receiving all and giv- 
ing nothing in return ; in the language of our text, 
gulping down the life-blood of their fellows, with- 
out so much as a " thank you " in return. 

That brings us to the old question, Can a rich 
man enter the kingdom of heaven ? Assuredly, yes. 
All things are possible with God, and to right- 
minded men. It is, indeed, harder for a rich man 
than for a poor man, for obvious reasons. Being a 
Christian, or entering the kingdom of God, simply 
means that, instead of setting up yourself and your 
possessions as ends in themselves, you shall make 
yourself, and all you have, organic, functional, in- 
strumental, serviceable to the great and glorious 
purposes of God, for the welfare and blessedness of 
men. And the more you are and the more you have, 
the harder it is to bring yourself and your posses- 
sions into this organic and functional subordina- 
tion to the will that makes for human happiness 
and social virtue. But just because it is so hard. 



THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 155 

therefore it is all the more glorious. The rich 
Christian is God's finest masterpiece in the world 
to-day. 

The man whose office is a pivot around which 
revolve in integrity and beneficence the wheels of 
industry and commerce, affording employment and 
subsistence to thousands of his fellows ; the woman 
whose home is a centre of generous hospitality, 
whence ceaseless streams of refinement and charity 
flow forth to bless the world ; the person whose 
leisure and culture and wealth and influence are 
devoted to the direction of forces, the solution of 
problems, the organization of movements which re- 
quire large expenditure of time and money — these 
men and women who are at the same time rich and 
Christian, these are the salt of our modern society ; 
by such comes the redemption of the world ; of such, 
no less than of the Christian poor, is the kingdom 
of heaven. No honest man grudges these Christian 
rich their wealth. It matters not whether their in- 
come is five hundred or fifty thousand a year. The 
question is whether the little or the much is made 
organic to the glory of God and the good of human- 
ity. And the greater the amount of wealth thus 
organized and utilized, the greater the glory and the 
larger the good. That is what it means in terms of 
wealth for the modern man to refuse to drink the 
precious water from the well of Bethlehem, and to 
pour it out unto the Lord. 



156 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 

Second, Pleasure. Pleasure is Nature's premium 
on healthy exercise of function. The more of it the 
better. There is no asceticism about the Gospel of 
Jesus Christ, though his followers have often tried 
to tack it on. We aU like pleasure, and are not 
ashamed to own it. Not suppression but fruition 
is the ideal of our nature. The modern world 
agrees with Beecher when he says, " My concep- 
tion of religion is to let every faculty effulge, touched 
with celestial fire." The Son of Man came eating 
and drinking and rejoicing, and shedding joy and 
gladness wherever he went. And the man who 
catches his spirit will find his own life more and 
more full of happiness. And I mean by that real, 
live, human happiness, not the pale, sickly counter- 
feit that lights up the countenances of emaciated 
hermits and psalm-singing pietists. Whatever min- 
isters to the exaltation of body or of mind, what- 
ever stirs the blood and quickens the pulses and 
thrills the nerves, is so far forth a good to be de- 
sired. There is not a bad appetite or passion in our 
nature, unless perversion makes it so. Our bodies 
are good ; and every physiological function is good, 
and the pleasure that comes of it a thing to be 
rejoiced in as the seal of vigor and vitality. Our 
minds are good ; and all the joys of mental exercise 
are glorious witnesses to the divine image in which 
we are made. Our hearts' loves are good, and ten- 
der ties that bind us together in families and friend- 



THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 157 

ships and mutual affections are the best gifts of God 
to men. 

There is, however, one condition of aU noble plea- 
sure. You must not buy it with the life-blood of 
your fellows ; you shall not purchase it at the cost 
of human degradation. The attempt to regulate 
pleasure and amusement by rule is mischievous and 
futile. The attitude of many good people toward 
cards and billiards, the theatre and the dance, is a 
concession to the devil of things that are altogether 
too good for him to monopolize. All these and 
kindred things are good, provided you do not pay 
too high a price for them. When billiards or cards 
are used to undermine the foundations of honest 
industry in a fellow-man ; when they are used to 
make one man's gain conditioned on another's loss ; 
when they divert the wages of the breadwinner 
from the support of his family to the till of the 
gambler or the saloon-keeper, then these things, 
innocent and beneficent in themselves, become 
heavy with the weight of hiunan misery, black with 
the odium of human degradation. 

The beauty of the human form and the charm 
of graceful movement, when wedded to expressive 
speech or entrancing song, are sources of the noblest 
and keenest of our delights. Against opera or drama 
no lover of his fellows has a word to say. 

When, however, for the spectacular embellish- 
ment of the performance, woman is asked to put 



158 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 

off that modesty which is her robe and crown, when 
the accessories of the exhibition are such that you 
would be unwilling to have one dear to you take 
part in it, then you are buying your pleasure with 
the red blood of a human heart and the stained 
whiteness of a sister's soul, — a price no true man 
will let another pay to procure for him a passing 
pleasure. 

The real reason why a true-hearted, noble man 
cannot walk in the ways of licentiousness is not 
the selfish fear of physical contamination or social 
reprobation. It is because he cannot take pleasure 
in the banishment of a daughter from the household 
of her father ; in the infamy of one who might have 
been a pure sister in a happy home ; in the degrad- 
ation of one who ought to be a wife, proud of the 
love of a good man and happy in the sweet joys of 
motherhood. On this point our social standards are 
still barbarous and our moral insight undeveloped. 
The man who has eyes to see these things as they 
are, the man who can realize the cost of shame and 
degradation to others which they involve, the man 
who can see this and still seek pleasure there, is a 
man whose moral affinities are with the bygone 
brutality of the Roman populace that found delight 
in seeing gladiators die, with the slave-drivers who 
forced human beings to labor with the lash. I care 
not how high such a man may stand in social cir- 
cles. He is a man with a cold, hard, cruel, callous 



THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 159 

heart ; a creature capable of finding a beastly satis- 
faction in drinking human blood. He has no part 
nor lot in the true nobility which flashed forth in 
the splendid deed of David, and finds its highest 
consummation in the pure, strong, loving heart of 
Christ. 

Can pleasure, then, like riches, be redeemed and 
made an acceptable offering to the Lord ? Is there 
a heaven for the pleasure-seeker and the pleasure- 
giver, as well as for the rich ? Most certainly. Nor- 
mal pleasure is the counterpart of healthy function, 
and blesses the giver no less than the recipient. 
The practice of any worthy art is ennobling, and 
gives more pleasure to the artist than to the looker- 
on. The actor, the singer, the painter, the poet, is 
not degraded, but uplifted, by the joy he gives. 
When you sail the seas or explore the wilderness, 
you make the skipper or the guide the sharer of 
your joys. And so with all the pure domestic and 
social pleasures that enrich the life of man. The 
test is so simple and clear that a fool can't miss 
it, though a knave may. Is the act that gives you 
pleasure at the same time, all things considered and 
in the long run, counting aU the costs and conse- 
quences, a source of permanent pleasure and well- 
being to the other persons who are affected by it ? 
The pleasure that fulfills this test is an acceptable 
offering to the Lord. All other pleasure is an abomi- 
nation in his eyes. Searching and severe as this test 



160 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 

is, there is n't a particle of asceticism about it. It 
simply asks you to do to others as you would that 
they should do to you, or to those whom you love 
best. That is what it means for us to make our 
theatres and places of amusement, our recreations 
and our pleasures, an offering to the Lord. 

Third, Politics. Of all the freely flowing waters of 
our modern civilization, there is no portion which has 
literally been brought to us at such risk of life and 
cost of blood as our political liberties and civic in- 
stitutions, From Marathon and Salamis, from the 
Netherlands under William the Silent, from the 
British sailors who fired the Spanish Armada, from 
Cromwell's Ironsides at Marston Moor, from the 
plains of Abraham, from Bunker HiU and Benning- 
ton, from Quebec and Saratoga, from Trenton and 
Yorktown, from Shiloh and Antietam, from Gettys- 
burg and the Wilderness, from all the brave souls 
who have risked their lives for liberty and law, for 
justice and humanity, we receive to-day the blessings 
they bought us with their blood. 

To drink of these waters unworthily means that 
we receive our liberties and institutions as a mere 
matter of course, with no sense of gratitude to God 
and the brave men who gave them to us. It means 
that we use the greatness of our country as a means 
to our petty, private ends. It means that we seek 
for ourselves or help secure for others offices and 
emoluments for which we or they are unfit. It 



THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 161 

means that by our indifference or preoccupation 
with our private affairs we permit others to do 
what we would be ashamed to do ourselves. It 
means that we find it, on the whole, cheaper and 
more economical to endure a worse government 
and pay a heavier tax rather than bestir ourselves 
to do our part toward securing efficient adminis- 
tration and honest government. It means that we 
acquiesce in corruption in elections and favoritism 
in appointments, and legislation by private purchase 
and irresponsible influence. 

Now, we all tolerate a great deal of this wrong- 
doing ; we all drink these dearly bought waters un- 
worthily, because in times of peace and plenty the 
evil consequences of our misdoing are obscured. 
The taxes levied by public authority are heavier ; 
the assessments imposed by party bosses are higher ; 
the streets are filthier ; life and property are less 
secure ; the owners of franchises pay bigger divi- 
dends and the laborer pays more for his water and 
light and transportation ; disease is more conta- 
gious, and the death-rate higher. But these evils 
are distributed over such wide areas and such long 
periods, and fall on such vast multitudes of peo- 
ple, that the individual scarcely feels or notices 
his added share. Even a War Department in time 
of peace and plenty may be administered on prin- 
ciples of personal patronage and private profit and 
political pull, and no great harm is manifest. It is, 



162 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 

however, one of the few advantages of war that it 
puts men and principles to the test, and with its 
keen-edged sword cuts out their unrighteousness 
and rottenness so cleanly that aU men may see and 
understand. Then we see what privilege and pull 
and spoils and incompetence and inefficiency mean, 
not in vague, general terms, but in terms of starva- 
tion and inefficiency and disease and death. It is 
a wholesome thing that, now that our brief war 
with Spain is over, we have not a particle of ani- 
mosity or resentment against the poor Spaniards 
who stood up at their posts and fired their bullets 
bravely at our breasts ; but that the men whom we 
find it the hardest to forgive are those who failed to 
send up to our own brave soldiers at the front, or 
even in their camps, the reasonable requirements of 
health and healing, of vigor and efficiency. The 
men the nation blames most bitterly to-day are 
those who, in places of responsibility, where the lives 
and hopes of thousands of men and families, as well 
as the nation's fortune and honor, were intrusted to 
them, had the audacity to hold these tremendous 
responsibilities in their hands, and then — to use 
the mildest term the whole vocabulary of whitewash 
affords — failed to grasp the situation in which the 
lives of these men and the fortunes of the nation 
by their authority were placed. 

If any great, lasting good shall come out of this 
late war, it will not be the speedy humiliation of 



THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 163 

Spain which every one foresaw, not the sudden ac- 
quisition of remote possessions which no one had 
anticipated ; it will be the recognition of the truth 
that the man who puts himself, or helps to put 
others, into positions of public responsibility for 
which he or they are unfit, is guilty of the only form 
of treason a great republic has to fear. 

What, then, is it to drink worthily the water of 
our dearly bought liberties and institutions ? It is 
simply to fit ourselves, and to hold ourselves in 
perpetual readiness, for the highest service to our 
country which we are capable of rendering ; and to 
see to it that unfit men are not allowed to crowd 
out their betters from the responsibilities of public 
service. Let each man, to the full extent of his 
ability and influence, do these two things, and he 
will do his part to solve the still unsolved problem 
of republics ; he will drink worthily, in this impor- 
tant sphere of politics, the precious water of the 
weU of Bethlehem. 

Fourth, Faith. The spiritual faith which comes 
to us to-day free as the water of the well was once 
red with martyr's blood. Through the great com- 
pany of missionaries, martyrs, confessors, apostles, 
who were persecuted and put to death for their 
fidelity, we trace this faith back to the Christ who 
Tvas crucified because he brought it to a mercenary, 
hypocritical, and hostile world. Jesus found the 
world believing in a pompous potentate who would 



164 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 

exact the last fartMng of debt from "his abject and 
superstitious subjects. He gave the belief in a lov- 
ing Father who seeks the good of all his children. 
Jesus found men believing in the God of the Phar- 
isee, — the God of people who think themselves 
better than their neighbors. He gave us the faith 
in the God of the lowly and the penitent. The 
world was seeking salvation by hardness and force. 
He brought it salvation through gentleness and 
mercy. The world beheved in a taskmaster and a 
lawgiver. Jesus showed himself our Saviour and 
our friend. Jesus found cruelty, and left kindness ; 
Jesus found lust, and left purity ; Jesus found pride, 
and left meekness ; Jesus found oppression, and 
left liberty. The hard, cruel, coarse, brutal, selfish, 
sensual world to which he came was loath to give up 
its hardness and greed, its sensuality and its hypoc- 
risy. Jesus nevertheless carried his gospel of love 
and kindness and purity and truth right into the 
very camp of the scribes and Pharisees, the hypo- 
crites and pretenders, the extortioners and tyrants. 
In rescuing the water of a sweeter, purer, lovelier 
life from the camp of the Pharisees and priests, 
Jesus not only risked, he actually laid down, his 
life. They indeed killed him, but he broke in pieces 
the cruel creed, the mercenary rites, the pretentious 
hypocrisy with which they had fenced in the well 
of spiritual life, and made free for aU men evermore 
the divine forgiveness of the penitent, the divine 



THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 165 

strength for the weak, the divine sympathy for the 
poor, the divine comfort for the troubled, the divine 
kingdom for the humble, the divine blessedness for 
the pure in heart. Theories of atonement may 
come and go ; the great historic fact remains that 
Jesus found a world of lust and cruelty and hypoc- 
risy and hate ; that he attacked those powers of 
evil with all his might ; that, in consequence, the 
evil forces of the world, the hypocrites and tyrants 
and extortioners, envied and hated and scourged 
and crucified him. Hence it is not a mere theo- 
logical theory, it is a plain historic fact, that he 
bore the sin of the world in his own body, and 
bought the world's emancipation from it with his 
blood. 

Hence for us to live the life of pride and sen- 
suality and selfishness and sin is not only to be 
guilty of doing these wrong things. For us to live 
the life of sin when he has won for the world the 
life of love and service, for us to sink into the sen- 
suality of brutes when he has shown us our fellow- 
ship with God ; for us to do these things to-day, is 
to throw away, so far as it is in our power, the 
costly benefits which he has purchased for us ; it is 
to drink unworthily the water of the well of Beth- 
lehem ; it is to make the sacrifice of Christ for us 
and for the world, so far as we are concerned, of 
none effect. It is to let him live and die for us, and 
then to go on in our sloth and selfishness as if no- 



166 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 

thing had happened, and no solemn and sacred 
obligation rested upon us to receive it worthily. 

And to make this water of life which Jesus pur- 
chased with his blood an acceptable offering to the 
Lord, — that means for you and me that we shall 
let the precious life of purity and kindness and gen- 
tleness and courage and love, which he brought 
to the world, come into our hearts, transform our 
lives, and go forth from us to help and bless man- 
kind. 

The noble life, or, what comes to the same thing, 
the Christian life, you see, is a very simple thing. 
It consists in rising above the petty selfishness and 
meanness of our individual, animal nature, and mak- 
ing our possessions, our pleasures, our politics, our 
faith functional in the greater organism of society 
for the accomplishment of that will of God which 
seeks the good of man. This noble life is open to 
us all ; and yet no man may carry into it a single 
penny of his wealth, a single indulgence of his ap- 
petites, a single department of his work, a single 
article of his creed, which has not first been offered 
up in service to the higher will of God and the larger 
good of man. Failure will be forgiven, mistakes 
overlooked, sins pardoned, repentance accepted, until 
seventy times seven, if only the noble purpose is 
really in the heart. The purpose, however, must be 
there. And that, too, not in a vague, general, sen- 
timental way. It must be there as a definite and 



THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 167 

earnest purpose to bring just such concrete things 
as money and pleasure and study and politics and 
society and business into functional subjection to 
this will of God which serves the good of man. With- 
out such a ruling purpose controlling the concrete 
conduct of daily life, no man can live the noble life, 
no man can cross the threshold of the kingdom of 
God, no man can enter into the glorious fellowship 
of brave and chivalrous men, no man can be a fol- 
lower of the great and glorious Christ. 

These conditions are indeed hard ; harder for the 
rich than for the poor, harder for the strong young 
man full of vigorous physical life than for the feeble 
and the weak, harder for the man of position and 
influence in a busy city than for the hermit. But 
the greater the difficulty the greater the glory. And 
I know not by what authority I should offer you 
the noble life on cheap and easy terms. To be a 
Christian is not easy ; character is not to be bought 
at a bargain ; and you who know the severe terms 
on which excellence in business or professional life 
must be purchased will not expect to gain Christian 
character without strenuous effort and serious sac- 
rifice. I tell you frankly that to make your money, 
your pleasure, your politics, and all the other rela- 
tions of your daily lives functional in the great pur- 
pose of God for the blessing of mankind is a very 
much harder and severer thing than luxury and in- 
dulgence and indolence. And it is just because it 



168 THE SACRIFICES OF A COLLEGE MAN 

does call for this heroism and self-sacrifice that I 
commend it to you with confidence. 

Let us, then, make David's noble deed the touch- 
stone of the worth of our wealth, the purity of our 
pleasures, the righteousness of our public service, 
and the vitality of our faith. Let us betake our- 
selves anew to the Christ in whom this nobleness, 
which flashed forth for a brief moment in the rude 
life of David, found constant and unwavering ex- 
pression. Let us use the spiritual aids without 
which no man can lift his life to this high plane, 
still less maintain it there. Let us conquer one 
by one the details of daily living, and win them 
over from servitude to our selfish and sensual de- 
sires, into the glorious liberty of that kingdom of 
God which is the commonwealth of man. 



VIII 

The Creed of a College Class 

IT is the custom in the course in government at 
Bowdoin College to require each student to 
write out his individual political platform ; so that 
in case of future Fullers, Fryes, and Reeds we can 
trace the development of their opinions from their 
college views. One's religious creed bears much 
the same relation to the study of philosophy that 
one's political platform does to the theoretical study 
of government. Accordingly, I asked a class of 
sixty students, mostly seniors, to write out their 
individual creeds. In these individual creeds I 
asked each man to state as exactly as possible both 
his belief and his unbelief ; and to define, as far 
as possible, the sense in which he held the things 
in which he believed and the sense in which he 
rejected the things he did not believe. I then re- 
duced these sixty creeds to a single composite creed. 
Into this composite creed I put everything which 
any student had ajBB.rmed, except what some of 
them had denied, — aiming in this way to get a 
class creed to which each individual member would 
assent. I distributed copies of this composite creed 
to each member of the class, and invited criti- 
cism and amendment. We then spent two hours 



170 THE CREED OF A COLLEGE CLASS 

together in discussing the articles of the creed one 
by one, making such modifications and concessions 
at each point as were necessary to secure their 
unanimous acceptance by the class. At the end 
of the second hour the creed was adopted by a 
unanimous vote. 

Of course a creed composed in this way is by 
no means an ideal or model creed. Many of the 
individual creeds were far more positive and com- 
prehensive than this composite creed. As showing, 
however, the things on which a typical college class 
can agree, this creed may be of interest. While 
many things are of necessity left out which we 
would like to see included, yet the fact that a 
typical college class can agree on as much as is 
included here is a sufficient assurance that the 
great institutions of Family, State, and Church 
will be safe in their hands ; and that their funda- 
mental attitude toward God, duty, and life, if not 
quite the traditional one, is yet positive, whole- 
some, and reverent. I present three creeds : one 
of the more conservative type, one of the more 
radical type, and one the composite creed agreed 
upon by all the class. 

A CONSERVATIVE COLLEGE CREED 

I believe in 

1. God as the central power of the universe, 
present alike in the works of man and nature. 



THE CREED OF A COLLEGE CLASS 171 

2. Christ as the truest expression of the char- 
acter of God and the supreme example for man to 
pattern after. 

3. In the Holy Ghost as that which urges man 
to better and higher things, and especially that 
which creates in the breast of man the love and 
trust in the Infinite and the satisfaction and peace 
at the knowledge of doing his will. 

4. Prayer as the effective means of obtaining 
what is for our permanent good when coupled with 
the efforts and faith of the asker. Also as the 
surest way to keep before man's consciousness the 
example of Christ's life. 

6. I believe in the eternal life as the survival 
after death of the mind of man. 

6. In heaven as the knowledge that we have 
lived to the best of our ability after the teachings 
of Christ. 

7. In hell as the realization of falling below our 
ideals through our own faults. 

8. In salvation as the conscious choosing by man 
of the life of Christ as his ideal and pattern. 

9. In the whole Bible as the inspired word of 
God to man. In that all that which is high and 
noble comes from God. Also that the Bible is, 
as a whole, the truest expression of God's will to 
man. 

If perhaps some things appear to be beyond the 
understanding of man, and apparently contrary to 



172 THE CREED OF A COLLEGE CLASS 

science, I remember that science is the product of 
man's observation, and that there may have been 
extra-scientific things beyond the comprehension of 
man. Again, there is so much symbolism through- 
out the Bible that it is hard to separate it from 
what was intended as fact. Therefore it is possible 
for me to see truth in the whole of the New Testa- 
ment, either actual or symbolical. 

A RADICAL COLLEGE CREED 

What I do not believe. 

I do not believe in the doctrine of original sin, 
nor in the various Biblical miracles, nor in the 
divine conception of Jesus, nor in the doctrine of 
atonement, nor in the Trinity, nor do I deem it 
necessary to believe these in order to be a Chris- 
tian. 

What I do believe. 

I believe in the existence of God, a divine Cre- 
ator and Ruler, who is only personal to the extent 
that he has purposes and effects results. 

I believe in the fundamental, immutable prin- 
ciple. Truth, akin to God, if not synonymous with 
God; that this Truth is the only imperishable 
thing in the universe, and that all other things are 
ephemeral. 

I believe that as certain human beings have to 
a finite extent apprehended a bit of the Truth and 



THE CREED OF A COLLEGE CLASS 173 

promulgated it, they have become known as great 
teachers, and won followers through the inherent 
yet passive force of the Truth. 

I believe Jesus Christ to have been the greatest 
of these teachers, inasmuch as he apprehended the 
Truth to a greater degree than all others. 

I believe his doctrines to have spread, not 
through the agency of any active spiritual essence 
known as the Holy Ghost, but because of their 
own inherent immortality and the transitoriness of 
all opposition. 

I believe Jesus Christ to have been divine only 
as he expounded the Truth, even as Confucius and 
Buddha, Socrates and Mohammed, may likewise 
be called divine, though to a less degree. 

THE CREED OF THE CLASS OF 1903 

I believe in one God, present in nature as law, 
in science as truth, in art as beauty, in history 
as justice, in society as sympathy, in conscience 
as duty, and supremely in Christ as our highest 
ideal. 

I believe in the Bible as the expression of God's 
will through man ; in prayer as the devotion of 
man's will to God ; and in the church as the fel- 
lowship of those who try to do God's will in the 
world. 

I believe in worship as the highest inspiration 
to work ; in sacrifice as the price we must pay to 



174 THE CREED OF A COLLEGE CLASS 

make right what is wrong ; in salvation as growth 
out of selfishness into service ; in eternal hfe as 
the survival of what loves and is lovable in each 
individual ; and in judgment as the obvious fact 
that the condition of the gentle, the generous, the 
modest, the pure, and the true is always and 
everywhere preferable to that of the cruel, the sen- 
sual, the mean, the proud, and the false. 



IX 

The Choice of the College Woman 

AEE college women happier or unhappier than 
other people? This is the rather delicate 
and dangerous question I propose to raise. The 
answer is easy, but the reasons for the answer are 
more subtle and difficult. Inasmuch as men's an- 
swers are occasionally wrong and women's answers 
are invariably right, while men's reasons are pre- 
dominantly right and women's reasons are occasion- 
ally wrong, I do not hope to change the opinion of 
any one of you about the answer to this question ; 
but even if you all reject my answer, I may still 
hope to interest you in the reasons by which it is 
supported. 

My answer would be that if college women re- 
main college women, and try to bring the world to 
them, they will be very unhappy ; but if they go 
into the world forgetting that they are different 
from other people they will be the happiest persons 
there. Some years ago we had a student who was 
a devoted lover of everything Greek. (This is so 
rare an occurrence in men's colleges to-day, that 
you will pardon the pride with which I mention it.) 
One day he fell in love, or what with men some- 
times passes for the same thing, he thought he did. 



176 THE CHOICE OF 

He became engaged to a charming young lady. One 
moonlight evening as he was sitting with her on 
the lawn he dropped the fatal remark, " My dear, 
I am afraid we shall never be happy unless you 
learn Greek." Do you ask how it came out ? The 
girl never did study Greek. Ten years later I vis- 
ited her charming home, and found her the happiest 
wife and mother I have seen in many a day, but — 
with another man. We who had congratulated our 
Greek on his engagement, had been obliged to con- 
gratulate her on breaking it ; and we added the 
comment, in which I am sure you all mentally join 
me, " She served him right." 

This little story is about the college woman. The 
day of graduation marks her engagement to the 
world. If you say to the world as my Greek said 
to his fiancee, "My dear world, I am afraid we 
shall not be happy together unless you acquire the 
equivalent of a college education," the world will 
contrive to be happy with somebody else, and leave 
you very unhappy. 

Perhaps you reply, " I never would be such a fool 
as that. Did I not say that the girl in the story 
served the young pedant just right, when she sent 
him about his business and married the other 
man ? " 

Yes. You all say that about the girl in the story, 
but in your own persons you wiU be sorely tempted 
to take the attitude of my young Greek. For 



THE COLLEGE WOMAN 177 

stripped of its setting in the moonliglit on the lawn, 
what he said was this : " My dear, I am afraid we 
never shall be happy unless I keep the interests I 
have, and you acquire these same interests too." 
Now I contend that anybody, man or woman, rich 
or poor, married or single, educated or uneducated, 
who says that to the world is doomed to be deserv- 
edly miserable. And I am afraid that college grad- 
uates, both men and women, have peculiar tempta- 
tions to take precisely that attitude. I am afraid 
that their comparative freedom from the immediate 
necessity for earning their living gives college wo- 
men who are inclined to take that attitude a better 
opportimity to do so than comes to college men. 
That is my reason for believing that a certain class 
of college women are not only more unhappy than 
other people, but are about the most unhappy people 
in all the world, and that they deserve all the un- 
happiness they get. 

On the other hand I believe that whoever says, 
" Dear world, I am sure I shall not be completely 
happy until I have made your interests mine " — 
whoever says that, whether man or woman, rich 
or poor, learned or ignorant, famed or obscure — 
will be growing happier and happier every day, and 
become one of the happiest persons in the world. 
I believe theit education and their comparative 
economic freedom gives college women the best 
chance to take this attitude in life, and therefore 



178 THE CHOICE OF 

the best opportunity for achieving the highest hap- 
piness. 

Inasmuch, then, as coUege women have more 
chance to choose than other people, and rather more 
temptation in some ways to choose wrongly, I have 
taken this Choice of the College Woman for my 
theme. Perhaps you expect me to set forth this 
choice as the familiar one between selfishness and 
service. No. If I were preaching a baccalaureate 
sermon, I might fall back on that; though it 
would be bringing coals to Newcastle to present to 
college women the superiority of the unselfish life. 
No. Deep as that moral difference is, I shall ask 
you to choose to-day between something deeper 
still. Your choice to-day is between aristocracy and 
democracy, — between the sense of superiority and 
the feeling of community, between the effort to 
shine and the willingness to share. In the home, 
in the market, in society, yes, even in charity work 
and in the social settlement, this deep distinction 
runs through all you do. Though the aristocratic 
attitude tends to coincide with the selfish, it is not 
quite identical with it. Though democracy has an 
affinity for service, the two terms are by no means 
interchangeable . 

A person may be democratic in his selfishness, or 
aristocratic in his service. One may try to shine as 
a stenographer, or simply share his best with others 
as a statesman or an artist. Deeper than vocation, 



THE COLLEGE WOMAN 179 

more closely related to happiness than even moral- 
ity itself, yes, even more fundamental than religion 
sometimes goes, is the Choice of the College Woman 
I to-day shall call on each of you to make. For in 
the last analysis it is nothing less than whether in 
the most comprehensive relation to your environ- 
ment you stand off and say, " you and I " with the 
accent of implied superiority on the "I," or clasp 
hands with your environment in a genuine accept- 
ance of the pronoun " we." 

Inasmuch as one who takes the democratic side 
of this choice lays himself open to the charge of 
being a Philistine, partly by way of self-protection 
and partly because the concrete pictures of poetry 
bring out distinctions better than the pale abstrac- 
tions of prose, I have cast the discussion in the form 
of a running commentary on Stephen Phillips's ex- 
quisite poem, "Marpessa;" so that my full title 
is, " Apollo or Idas : The Choice of the Col- 
lege Woman." You recall the situation. Like you 
Marpessa is called to choose between shining down 
on the world with a god above it, or sharing its toil 
and sorrow with a shepherd, on a level with his 
humble human lot. 

When the long day that glideth without cloud, 
The summer day was at her deep blue hour 
They three together met ; on the one side, 
Fresh from diffusing light on all the world 
Apollo ; on the other without sleep 
Idas, and in the midst Marpessa stood. 



180 THE CHOICE OP 

First the god, assuming the rights of the supe- 
rior, sprang to embrace her. But they 

Heard thunder, and a little afterward 
The far Paternal voice, " Let her decide." 

Then in turn Apollo and Idas, the god and the 
shepherd, present their suits. Precisely so these 
two radically different attitudes toward life con- 
front the college woman at the noon hour of the 
day she graduates. Many, perhaps most of you 
stand ready to place the keeping of your Hves in 
the hands of the divine Apollo. To shine down on 
the world with the light of literature, of music, of 
art, or failing that, in the gentle ministry of the 
social settlement, the charity organization, is the 
ideal to which you have devoted your future lives. 
This is a beautiful ideal ; I know how it charms 
and attracts the earnest college woman. Yet in the 
name of the "far Paternal voice " I must ask you 
to listen impartially to the god and to his hiunan 
rival, — I must ask you to hear the claims of 
this life of shining from above and the claims of 
the life of sharing on a level ; I must set over 
against each other the artistic elevation of the 
world, or its socialistic reformation from the out- 
side, and the simple living out of the world's 
homely human interests from the inside ; and then 
ask you to choose. More than you can dream or 
imagine, your individual happiness through all the 



THE COLLEGE WOMAN 181 

coming years of Kfe, and the estimation of col- 
lege women as a class, depend on this momentous 
decision. First let us listen to the god, — a voice 
familiar to you all, and to which I am sure many of 
you are on the point of yielding. 

Apollo says : — 

"IHve 
Forever in a deep deliberate bliss, 
A spirit gliding through tranquillity ; 
Yet when I saw thee I imagined woe, 
That thou, who art so fair, shouldst ever taste 
Of the earth-sorrow : for thy life has been 
The history of a flower in the air, 
Liable but to breezes and to time, 
As rich and purposeless as is the rose : 
Thy simple doom is to be beautiful. 
Thee God created but to grow, not strive, 
And not to suffer, merely to be sweet." 

" But if thou 'It live with me, then shalt thou bide 
In mere felicity above the world, 
In peace alive and moving, where to stir 
Is ecstasy, and thrilling is repose." 

" And I will carry thee above the world. 
To share my ecstasy of flinging beams. 
And scattering without intermission joy." 

" Op since thou art a woman, thou shalt have 
More tender tasks : 
To lure into the air a face long sick. 
To gild the brow that from its dead looks up, 
To shine on the unforgiven of this world : 
With slow sweet surgery restore the brain, 
And to dispel shadows and shadowy fear." 



182 THE CHOICE OF 

Such and so persuasive is the appeal of the ar- 
tistic life, the life of the social reformer. To feel 
that we belong above and apart ; and yet that 
we send down an illuminating radiance, a healing 
effluence, — that appeals to us as something divi- 
ner than just being one of the toiling, suffering 
masses on whom the light is shed. To travel, and 
get impressions of art and music ; to read, and get 
stores of literature and science ; to give lectures, 
or write articles, or work out some social reform 
— be honest now and tell me, is not something of 
this sort the ideal of life that is hovering over you 
as the best use to which a college woman can put 
her college education ? 

Now I will not attempt to deny that there is 
beauty and worth in this ideal. All I ask is that, 
before you accept it as the highest, you hear what 
can be said for the humble, homely human sharing 
of the world's experience from within, as one of 
the rank and file. And since we have had the 
former plea in its poetic form, to be fair, let the 
poet plead again. 

When he had spoken, humbly Idas said : 
" After such argument what can I plead ? 
Or what pale promise make ? Yet since it is 
In woman to pity rather than to aspire, 
A little I will speak." 

Then comes the great statement of woman's mis- 
sion in the world, not as one of remote and isolated 



THE COLLEGE WOMAN 183 

illumination, as of a sun in the heavens, but of 
sympathy, enlargement, and inspiration, as of a 
modest common candle lighting its little sphere in 
the surroimding dark. It does not ask for radi- 
ance and glory to reform things from above. It 
pleads for the comradeship and kindliness that 
shall lift the common human task up into its infi- 
nite and eternal significance, and make earth a 
part of heaven ; the present the heir of all the rich- 
ness of the past, and the promise of all the glory 

that is to come. 

" I love thee then 
Not for that face that might indeed provoke 
Invasion of old cities ; no, nor all 
Thy freshness stealing on me like strange sleep. 
Not for this only do I love thee, but 
Because Infinity upon thee broods ; 
And thou art full of whispers and of shadows. 
Thou meanest what the sea has striven to say 
So long, and yearned up the cliffs to tell ; 
Thou art what all the winds have uttered not, 
What the still night suggesteth to the heart. 
Thy voice is like to music heard ere birth. 
Some spirit lute touched on a spirit sea ; 
Thy face remembered is from other worlds, 
It has been died for, though I know not when, 
It has been sung of, though I know not where. 
It has the strangeness of the luring West, 
And of sad sea-horizons; beside thee 
I am aware of other times and lands. 
Of birth far back, of lives in many stars. 
O beauty lone and like a candle clear 
In this dark country of the world ! Thou art 
My woe, my early light, my music dying.'' 



184 THE CHOICE OF 

I shall not detain you to-day to draw out at 
length the prose equivalent of these poetic pleas. 
I simply place before you these two alternatives : 
to be a brilliant benefactress in some special way, 
and to be a simple sharer, in humble helpfulness, 
of the common human lot, lifting your little place 
and station by the inspiration of your culture and 
your kindliness, instead of shedding a dazzling radi- 
ance on some vast problem of the world at large. 
Before leaving our poet, however, I must give you 
briefly the answer of his maiden, an answer which 
in substance I hope will be the answer of each one 
of you. Taking the shepherd's human hand in hers, 
she thus addressed the god : — 

" Fain would I know 
Yon heavenly wafting through the heaven wide, 
And the large view of the subjected seas, 
And famous cities, and the various toil 
Of men: all Asia at my feet spread out 
In indolent magnificence of bloom ! 
Africa in her matted hair obscured, 
And India in meditation plunged ! '' 

" But dearest, this, 
To gild the face that from its dead looks up, 
To shine on the rejected, and arrive 
To women that remember in the night; 
Or mend with sweetest surgery the mind. 
And yet, forgive me if I can but speak 
Most human words/' 

" As yet I have known no sorrow ; all my days 
Like perfect lilies under water stir, 



THE COLLEGE WOMAN 185 

And God has sheltered me from his own wind ; 
The darling of his breezes I have been." 

" Yet as to one inland, that dreameth lone, 
Seafaring men with their sea-weary eyes 
Round the inn-fire tell of some foreign land. 
So aged men, much tossed about in life, 
Have told me of that country, Sorrow far." 

" And most I remember of all human things 
My mother ; often as a child I pressed 
My face against her cheek, and felt her tears ; 
Even as she smiled on me, her eyes would fill, 
Until my own grew ignorantly wet ; 
And I in silence wondered at sorrow." 

" Out of our sadness have we made this world 
So beautiful." 

" To all this sorrow I was born, and since 
Out of a human womb I came, I am 
Not eager to forego it ; I would scorn 
To elude the heaviness and take the joy." 

The college woman who plunges immediately 
into scholarly, artistic, literary, or even into set- 
tlement or philanthropic work, though she sheds 
light on the problems and comforts the sorrows 
of others, in so doing is really shirking her own 
hardest problem, and eluding for herself the most 
trying of personal sorrows. I have not a word to 
say against these forms of service when rightly 
approached, but on the contrary the highest com- 
mendation. I simply tell you that the right ap- 



186 THE CHOICE OF 

proach to these things is not straight from a college 
commencement. College life is abnormal; it is 
artificially shielded. All your days " like perfect 
lilies under water stir." You have been these four 
years sheltered from God's wind, the darlings of 
his breezes. What have you known of the dreary 
drudgery that underlies the happy life of a grow- 
ing family of children ? What do you know of the 
tremendous crush of cruel competition ? What do 
you, you who have been the special objects of hun- 
dreds of thousands of dollars of invested capital 
and scores of expert instructors and sympathetic 
advisers, — what do you know of the coldness and 
hardness and indifference of a world where each is 
supremely intent on his own selfish ends, and treats 
you merely as an obstruction, a rival, or at best as 
a tool ? You must bear on your own back your 
share of the world-burden, and feel in your own 
heart your part in the world-sorrow, in normal ex- 
perience within the home, the shop, the market, 
before you have the slightest possibility of being 
able profitably to shine down upon it from above 
with artistic radiance or social reformation. Ask 
any editor, and he will tell you how worthless is 
your poetic effusion ; ask any head worker and he 
will tell you how superfluous your social service 
must be, until in some normal relation you have 
first learned to bear your own burden, and take 
your fair share of the homely toil and humdrum 



THE COLLEGE WOMAN 187 

discomfort of which every useful life is full. After 
you have borne your own share of the world's bur- 
den and sorrow, you may be promoted to express 
the feelings of the world in letters, or to comfort 
its heart in social service. But you must first serve 
the long apprenticeship to real life, of which as yet 
most of you have not the faintest conception. 

Yet I would not leave the impression that joy is 
to be found with Apollo, and only suffering with 
Idas. True to life, our poet teaches us precisely 
the reverse. Apollo grows weary of his devotee. 
It is not in the power of the human mind to be 
perpetually brilliant. An ardent lover, Apollo is 
a very exacting and indifferent husband. The 
deeper sort of men soon learn that little real satis- 
faction is to be gained through either intellectual 
brilliancy or public service. They seek their deeper 
joy in simpler ways, from more homely, fireside 
sources. 

With women the inadequacy of the literary or 
public life to afford real happiness is much more 
apparent. 

Whether for man or for woman, but far more 
for woman than for man, true and lasting happi- 
ness is to be found not in the brilliant intellec- 
tual or social performance, but in the plain hand- 
in-hand walking with a comrade along the dusty 
streets of daily duty, and in the peaceful glades of 
private life. All this Marpessa has told so well in 



188 THE CHOICE OF 

her rejection of Apollo and her acceptance of Idas, 
that she shall be our final spokesman here to-day. 

«Ah, I 
Should ail beside thee, Apollo, and should note 
With eyes that would not be, but yet are dim, 
Ever so slight a change from day to day 
In thee my husband ; watch thee nudge thyself 
To little offices that once were sweet. 
I should expect thee by the Western bay, 
Faded, not sure of thee, with desperate smiles. 
And pitiful devices of my dress 
Or fashion of my hair ; thou wouldst grow kind, — 
Most bitter to a woman that was loved. 
I must ensnare thee to my arms, and touch 
Thy pity, to but hold thee to my heart. 
But if I live with Idas, then we two 
On the low earth shall prosper hand in hand 
In odours of the open field, and live 
In peaceful noises of the farm, and watch 
The pastoral fields burned by the setting sun." 

" Or at some festival we two 
Will wander through the lighted city streets ; 
And in the crowd I '11 take his arm and feel 
Him closer for the press. So shall we live." 

" There shall succeed a faithful peace ; 
Beautiful friendship tried by sun and wind, 
Durable from the daily dust of life.*' 

" But we shall sit with luminous holy smiles. 
Endeared by many griefs, by many a jest, 
And custom sweet of living side by side; 
And full of memories not unkindly glance 
Upon each other." 



THE COLLEGE WOMAN 189 

" Still like old friends, glad to have met, and leave 
Behind a wholesome memory on the earth." 

You have my answer to the question concern- 
ing the happiness of college women, and the rea- 
sons therefor. In conclusion, to sum it all up in 
condensed and abstract form, differentiation and 
specialization are essential to the largest usefulness 
and the highest happiness. The college has made 
you different from other people, and fitted you for 
a highly useful and honorable service to the world, 
and thus placed the possibility of happiness within 
your reach. 

But the consciousness of being different from 
other people, the sense of superiority, the disposi- 
tion to look down upon them, is highly injurious 
to usefulness, and absolutely fatal to happiness. 
The aristocrat, whether his aristocracy be based 
on birth or wealth or station or culture, is always 
an unhappy man. All the pessimists and cynics, 
all the world-weary and the disconsolate, if you 
probe the secret source of their complaint, betray 
the fatal germ of aristocracy preying on their hearts. 
There is a deep reason why this must be so. Happi- 
ness and unhappiness register the sense of transition 
as we go out of our constant, neutral, normal state 
of feeling which we carry with us all the time, to 
some state induced in us by contact with the world. 
Now the modest person, the democrat, always finds 
in the world outside, and in the other people in it, 



190 THE CHOICE OF 

something as good as himself, or a little better ; 
consequently his sense of contact with the world is 
always agreeable, and registers itself in the form 
of happiness. The aristocrat, on the other hand, 
never gets anything that is better than himself ; 
and in the majority of his contacts he strikes what 
he regards as worse. Hence his chronic unhappi- 
ness, and the wail of pessimism in which he pro- 
claims liis misery to the world. 

Every genuine and modest democrat, man or 
woman, rich or poor, learned or ignorant, beautiful 
or plain, famous or obscure, is bound to be predom- 
inantly happy. The laws of psychology, the nature 
of things, the constitution of the universe, the de- 
crees of God, compel them to be happy. For every 
touch brings a thrill of sympathy ; every contact 
expands ; every relation enlarges ; every experience 
enriches ; every outlook uplifts ; every glance dis- 
covers good ; every breath draws inspiration : the 
whole world is ablaze with glory, and the meanest 
thing and the lowliest person are links that lift 
one into fellowship with what is felt to be better 
than one's self, chains that draw one toward the 
omnipresent throne of the Most High. 

All persons who are tainted with the disease of 
aristocracy, whether the fancied superiority rest on 
birth or wealth or beauty or skill or education, 
whether men or women, old or young, in public 
or in private life, are bound to be at heart bitter, 



THE COLLEGE WOMAN 191 

lonely, and unhappy. All the prmciples of psy- 
chology, all the laws of society, all the decrees of 
God combine to doom them to ever-present and 
everlasting misery. Turn where they will, they 
meet what, judged by the standard they have set 
up within their own conceit, seems base, low, dull, 
stupid, uninteresting. Misery is the loathsome in- 
side of the living sepulchre of which aristocracy is 
the whited exterior. There never was a man who 
on any ground considered himself superior to the 
rank and file of his fellows who was really happy. 
And just because woman is more sensitive to these 
personal relations, there never was a proud woman 
who was not, as the inevitable counterpart of her 
pride, eating her heart out in the gall of bitter- 
ness. 

There is no law of nature more inevitable, no 
decree of God more inexorable than this, — that the 
democrat, with his modest sense of equality and 
his readiness for admiration and respect toward 
his fellows, must be happy ; and that the aristocrat, 
with his sense of superiority and habit of contempt, 
must be wretched. You college women have some- 
thing which the rest of the world has not. Forget 
it, — think of the farmer, the mechanic, the clerk 
as your brothers ; the seamstress, the shop-girl, the 
factory hand as your sisters ; respect and reverence 
their contribution to the world as highly as you re- 
spect and reverence your own ; look forward to the 



192 THE CHOICE OF 

time when, after years of apprenticeship to real 
life, you may do your little part with something of 
the patient, modest, cheerful unpretentiousness and 
genuineness with which they already are doing 
theirs ; and they will welcome and appreciate you 
as the most exalted of their sisters ; you will be 
happy in your own usefulness and in the honor they 
will freely bestow on you and the class of women 
you represent. 

On the other hand, if you dare to think of your- 
selves as superior to them, if you draw yourselves 
apart, if you condescend to them even to pity or 
to serve, if you put up the bars of intellectual and 
social aristocracy between them and you, they will 
hate you, and despise you, and ridicule you ; and 
the sense of your own isolation and alienation will 
burn itself into your soul like a withering, scorching 
curse. There will be no lost wretch in the slums, 
no downtrodden drudge in the tenements, no day 
laborer in the ditches, no obscure toiler at the looms 
with a heavier, sadder heart than you. 

The choice is momentous. The issues for the 
individual are those of happiness or misery ; for 
society, whether, now that the old aristocracies of 
state and church are broken down, we shall have 
new aristocracies of wealth and culture to corrupt 
and embitter alike despisers and despised. The 
college man, for the most part to-day, becomes a 
democrat of necessity ; for there are not enough 



^ THE COLLEGE WOMAN 193 

aristocratic stations to go around, and the world 
no longer bestows a living on either hereditary 
or professional aristocratic pretensions. May our 
college women do in freedom what their college 
brothers do under economic compulsion ! May they 
be the comrades of all who labor, the sisters of all 
who serve! 



X 

The Worth of the Womanly Ideal 

ME. DOOLEY once remarked to Mr. Hen- 
nessey that in liis youth he wrote a book 
about woman ; but when in maturer life he came 
to publish it he added at the end what the scientists 
call Errata^ in which he requested his readers, 
wherever in its pages they found " is " to substi- 
tute " is not," and wherever they found " is not " to 
substitute ''may be," "perhaps," or "God knows." 
Pretty much everything that has ever been said 
on the subject of women's rights, whether by men 
or women, whether on the one side or the other, 
requires to-day the radical revision to which Mr. 
Dooley subjected his youthful manuscript. 

Though individual women still suffer grievous 
wrongs, yet, broadly speaking, women's rights are 
won. Women's rights are all within her grasp, or 
at least within her reach. We can say with John 
Davidson : — 

Free to look at fact, 
Free to come and go, 
Free to think and act, 
Now you surely know 
The wrongs of womanhead 
At last are fairly dead. 



WORTH OF THE WOMANLY IDEAL 195 

The solution of one social problem, however, 
prepares the way for another. Now that women 
can have anything they want, the question arises, 
What do women want? What career is best for 
them? In other words, the modern question is 
no longer one of women's rights. It has become 
the question of the Womanly Ideal. 

When we pass from rights to ideals, when we 
stop asking what can women be permitted to have, 
and ask instead, what do women really want, then 
we get our answer no longer in terms of equal- 
ity, but in terms of difference. The demand for 
women's rights got for its answer. Let us try to 
make men and women as nearly alike as possi- 
ble ; let us give them the same education and set 
them the same tasks; let us measure them by 
the same standard and pay them in the same coin. 
The recognition of the Worth of the Womanly 
Ideal will give us as its fulfillment a deepening of 
the differences between men and women. It will 
teach us to train men and women in different ways 
for different tasks. It will estimate their success 
on an entirely different scale, — offer them differ- 
ent rewards for success, and punish their failures 
by different penalties. 

First, what is the difference between the eco- 
nomic ideal for men and that for women ? The most 
fundamental distinction in economics is between 
production and consumption. The two, though dis- 



196 THE WORTH OF 

tinguishable, like the convex and concave aspects 
of a curve, are practically inseparable. Production 
is for the sake of consumption. Consumption pre- 
supposes production. A person who does not share 
the proceeds of his production with others is a 
money-mad miser. The person whose consumption 
does not rest on production is a thieving parasite. 
Of course production may be vicarious ; husband 
and father producing for wife and children ; and 
consumption may be delegated, wife or daughter 
taking charge of the whole family expenditure. 

In a broad way, subject to exceptions and quali- 
fications to be made a little later, the manly eco- 
nomic ideal is the effective direction of production ; 
the womanly ideal is the beneficent ordering of 
consumption. Let us consider the womanly ideal 
first. 

Goods are not immediately useful when produced 
in large quantities. Food must be prepared and 
served. The house must be furnished and kept in 
order. Cloth must be fitted to the person who 
is to wear it, and kept cleanly and presentable. 
Children must be separately reared and individu- 
ally trained. Hospitality must be extended. The 
sick must be nursed and the aged must be cared 
for. 

The right rendering and ordering of these and 
kindred services is woman's distinctive economic 
function. Happy is the woman who as daughter, 



THE WOMANLY IDEAL 197 

sister, wife, mother, finds herself excused from the 
task of direct economic production by the gen- 
erous devotion of father, brother, husband, or son, 
and can find the economic justification of her life 
in this ministry and superintendence of the common 
household consumption. For it is a function just 
as necessary, just as useful, just as honorable as 
law, or banking, or commerce, or agriculture, or 
manufacture, or transportation. It is a function for 
which women are by nature and taste eminently 
fitted, and for which most manly men are conspicu- 
ously unfit. It is a wise distribution of economic 
functions which assigns in this broad way the 
direction of economic production to men, and the 
ordering of economic consumption to women. 

If this beneficent ordering of consumption in and 
through a home which is provided by the productive 
labor of others is the best opportunity for the 
expression of the womanly ideal, what remains for 
the women, of whom there are some five million in 
this country, who are compelled to earn the whole 
or a portion of their living ? They of course must 
seek employment. What sort of employment shaU 
they seek? 

In attempting to answer this question, you must 
allow me to make one somewhat technical distinc- 
tion, — the distinction between production for im- 
mediate consumption, in a specific locality, for per- 
sons who are weU known, and with whom there is 



198 THE WORTH OF 

or can be established some personal relationship, on 
the one hand ; and production for what economists 
call the speculative market, '' conjunctive produc- 
tion," as the German economists call it ; production 
which is determined by the play of world-forces, 
for a general market, in unrestricted competition 
with every other producer. Examples of produc- 
tion for immediate consumption are nursing, domes- 
tic service, teaching, type-writing, retailing in small 
communities, work for wages or salaries in factories 
or offices, the practice of medicine, acting, music, 
the management of such local industries as serve 
patrons personally known to the manager. In all 
these forms of production for immediate consump- 
tion, the fidelity, the thoroughness, the tact, the 
courtesy, the sympathy, the aesthetic sense and so- 
cial grace of woman give her a certain advantage 
which partly or wholly — and sometimes more than 
wholly — offsets the superior physical strength of 
man. 

These are the careers in which women who have 
to earn their own living, or that of persons depend- 
ent upon them, will find their best satisfaction and 
success. A woman can succeed in these callings ; 
and what is of more consequence, she can succeed 
with no loss of that generous interest and kindly ser- 
vice for others which is such an essential part of the 
womanly ideal. Indeed, in aU these callings women 
contrive to become more rather than less womanly, 



THE WOMANLY IDEAL 199 

enlarging the circle of those whom they love and 
serve with true womanly devotion to include their 
pupils, their employers, their customers, their pa- 
trons, and their patients. 

What then remains exclusively for men ? From 
what economic activities does the womanly ideal 
exclude woman altogether? This exclusively mas- 
culine sphere is production on the large scale, pro- 
duction for the speculative market, conjunctive 
production; production in competition and colli- 
sion with the vast, shifting, hostile, stubborn facts 
and forces of the world. 

Here woman is doomed to financial failure if she 
enters the arena, and even if she should succeed 
financially, as in one case in ten thousand I should 
admit that she might, it would be at a cost to her 
physical health or to her personal character and 
womanly nature which would make her financial 
success more pathetic than financial failure. To 
this statement I of course admit the rare exception. 
Indeed, when I go to New York I sometimes call 
on a lady, an old friend of my school-days, who has 
made a fortune in mining, and is secretary and di- 
rector of several successful mining enterprises, and 
whom I find as charming as ever. But then when 
I come back to Boston I find one of my Harvard 
classmates a very successful dressmaker, having 
made a good deal more money in this business than 
most of us who have followed more masculine vo- 



200 THE WORTH OF 

cations. One case is just as extremely exceptional 
as the other, and neither invalidates the general 
principle that mining is on the whole a masculine, 
and dressmaking a feminine vocation. 

These exclusively masculine vocations, such as 
mining, manufacturing, transportation, law, bank- 
ing, commerce, wholesale trade, involve a degree of 
strain, a kind of contact, a sort of emotional and men- 
tal attitude which not one woman in a million can 
stand without either disaster or deterioration. For 
the producer of a general commodity comes into in- 
tense competition with everybody in his line of busi- 
ness. He is exposed to severe strain, enormous risk, 
frequent quarrels, perpetual antagonism. He must 
be constantly alert to adapt methods and processes 
to changing conditions and varying demands. He 
must make important decisions instantaneously; 
take risks by telegraph which hang in the balance 
between profit and loss for weeks and months ; 
strike hard blows swiftly ; deal resolutely with dis- 
honest contractors, insolvent debtors, striking work- 
men, incompetent agents, unscrupulous competitors, 
corrupt politicians, fickle customers, treacherous 
friends, and secret enemies almost every day of his 
active business life. In this strife of contending 
interests, where good and bad meet on equal terms, 
asking no favor and giving no quarter, in the face 
of enmity and calumny, fraud and deception, men 
manage to turn out their product, and make their 



THE WOMANLY IDEAL 201 

enterprises a success, without a very large propor- 
tion of physical breakdowns, and without the de- 
struction of their personal character. Under these 
conditions the normal woman could not succeed in 
more than one case in ten thousand ; and even then 
she would be almost sure to perish on one of the 
two rocks that guard this narrow passage, — nervous 
prostration or hardening of heart. No law to-day 
forbids a woman from entering these competitive 
careers. The womanly ideal forbids it ; and it does 
so on the ground that the womanly ideal is of such 
supreme worth, to herself and to her children, to 
her family and to the world, that she ought not to 
run the risk of losing it for the sake of the largest 
rewards these competitive careers hold out to the 
winners. 

The feminine ideal, to make toil tolerable, and 
leisure enjoyable, and home habitable, and, in Ste- 
venson's phrase, life livable, by the beneficent 
ordering of consumption, and the gentle ministry 
to individual persons, whether in the home or in 
some not too exacting and impersonal vocation, — 
this is so supremely precious that the woman who 
risks it for an attempt to imitate or rival the activ- 
ities of men in conjunctive production wrongs her 
own soul, and in so doing robs the world of her 
most distinctive and valuable contribution. 

In scholarship this same distinction between pro- 
duction and the beneficent ordering of consumption 



202 THE WORTH OF 

will guide us to the distinction between the mas- 
culine and the feminine ideals. It is needless to 
say that the pretty ignoramus, the regular-featured 
nonentity, has ceased to be either the ideal women 
cherish for themselves, or the one which men have 
for them. We all agree that there should be ele- 
mentary education for all women ; secondary edu- 
cation for those whose parents can afford to give 
it to them ; college education for those who have 
the financial means and physical health ; graduate 
education for those who add to these qualifica- 
tions marked capacity in some special line. Having 
granted these rights, the question remains. What 
is the ideal for women, and how does it differ 
from the ideal for men ? 

Women are larger consumers and better dis- 
tributors of knowledge than men. They read more 
books, and get more satisfaction out of intellectual 
pursuits than men. Put boys and girls together in 
school and college, and if you are foolish enough 
to give them their relative rank, and to offer them 
prizes, the girls will win much more than their 
proportion. Indeed many coeducational institutions 
have been forced to put up some sort of protec- 
tive barrier in order to give the poor boys half a 
chance. The problem of women's education is not, 
as in the case of men, to provide spurs for the 
flanks of laziness, and blinders against temptations 
to dissipation, but to devise sufficiently effective 



THE WOMANLY IDEAL 203 

checks and hold-backs to keep them from drafting 
oflf into intellectual and social activities the vital- 
ity which nature intrusted to them for more funda- 
mental functions. The one danger is that woman, 
driven by keen intellectual ambition, and backed 
by an uncompromising conscience, will spend so 
freely of her vital forces on study, and the social 
interests which study stimulates, that she will 
lose what for her are infinitely more important, 
— healthy outdoor life, superabundant physical 
vigor, democratic interests, cheerful temper. Piti- 
ful beyond expression is the mistake of those 
women who squander the wealth of physical vital- 
ity meant for twenty generations to gain some 
paltry academic honor or ephemeral social success. 
Terrible are the penalties nature exacts, — muscu- 
lar flabbiness, nervous exhaustion, sharp-featured 
irritability, flat-chested sterility. The over-ambi- 
tious society girl or schoolgirl who diverts into 
channels of her individual social vanity or intel- 
lectual ambition, during the first few years of her 
lifetime, what nature lent her as a trust for the 
benefit of future generations, is guilty of a sin 
against the fountain-head of humanity, a crime 
against the race. And the fact that this crime is 
being committed by thousands of the most sweet- 
natured, conscientious, and self-sacrificing girls in 
the civilized world does not in the least mitigate the 
heinous nature of the offense, nor will it diminish 



204 THE WORTH OF 

by a single stripe the inexorable penalty which out- 
raged nature will exact. In her own interest, in 
the interest of her family, and in the interest of the 
race, woman's education should never be permitted 
to intrench on perfect health, normal functions, 
habitual cheerfulness, contagious happiness. The 
high school is far more perilous than the college ; 
and it is at this stage of their education that girls 
need most careful protection against the combined 
strain of severe mental work and absorbing social 
interests. 

Of course standards of attainment must be main- 
tained for women as for men. But beyond know- 
ing whether she has passed or failed to pass the 
minimum requirement, no school or college girl 
ought to be bothered with the knowledge of whether 
her rank is high or low in comparison with that 
of other boys and girls ; and she should never be 
tempted by the offer of a prize. These spurs, which 
may be necessary for indolent and conscienceless 
boys, are mischievous and injurious when applied 
to responsive and often over-ambitious girls. No 
trace of the competitive element should enter into 
the education of girls. So far as possible they 
should be tested by regular performance from day 
to day, rather than subjected to the strain of high- 
pressure examination periods on which their intel- 
lectual fate is supposed to hang. A larger immu- 
nity from abstruse subjects like mathematics should 



THE WOMANLY IDEAL 205 

be accorded to those who have no taste for these 
studies. They should be encouraged, wherever health 
seems to require it, to take a four years' course 
in five years ; and they should have greater free- 
dom as to when to attend and when not to attend 
exercises. Healthy and happy enjoyment of study, 
without external stimulus, and in freedom from 
all competitive considerations, are the educational 
ideals at which high schools and colleges should 
aim in their dealing with girls. Boys and girls 
are very different, and the methods of their educa- 
tion should be different. What is wholesome medi- 
cine for one is fatal poison for the other. In educa- 
tion as elsewhere, now that equal rights have been 
won, differing ideals is the next stage of advance. 

What, then, is the womanly as distinct from the 
manly ideal in scholarship ? What is the beneficent 
ordering of intellectual consumption ? It is the 
appreciation and appropriation of whatever is true 
and interesting in science, literature, art, and na- 
ture, and the interpretation and expression of these 
things so that they may become interesting and 
enjoyable to others. Intelligent conversation, oral 
reading, the rendering of music, certain forms of 
art, dramatic representation, discussion of social 
questions, and especially the training and teaching 
of children, — these are some of the intellectual 
services an educated woman can render ; and in 
many of these woman is superior to man. In cer- 



206 THE WORTH OF 

tain forms of story-telling, character-delineation, 
and description women writers are supreme. 

If this appropriation and transmission of the 
treasures of truth and beauty is woman's distinc- 
tive province ; if more and more of this high func- 
tion is being given over into woman's hands, as all 
our statistics of teaching show that it is, what in- 
tellectual province remains for men ? 

A very important, a very arduous, if less con- 
spicuous and less popular part remains, and prob- 
ably will remain almost exclusively in the hands 
of men, — the part of productive scholarship. By 
productive scholarship is meant the power to grasp 
as a whole some great department of human know- 
ledge ; keep abreast of every advance that is made 
in it ; from time to time add some contribution to 
it, and above all so vitally to incorporate it, so 
vigorously to react upon it, and so systematically 
to organize it, that the scholar puts his individual 
stamp upon it, and compels whoever would master 
the subject to reckon with the individual form 
which he has given to it. Productive scholarship 
of this high sort is very rare, whether in men or 
women. Its price is very high, — in time and 
strength, in withdrawal from other interests and 
concentration upon one's chosen subject, in sacri- 
fice of domestic and social claims. 

In these days no one disputes the right of women 
to pursue this exacting ideal of productive scholar- 



THE WOMANLY IDEAL 207 

ship, no one denies that a few very exceptional 
women have succeeded in attaining it : enough, in- 
deed, to supply our few women's colleges with pro- 
fessors who are productive scholars. This gift, rare 
in men, is, however, far more rare in women. Su- 
preme in acquisition, unequaled in transmission and 
distribution, when it comes to this distinctively 
creative act, this organizing of facts in the light of 
the universal principles which bind them into sys- 
tematic unity, women as a rule have far less of this 
essential of productive scholarship than men. The 
very tendencies which make them win more than 
their share of the prizes in the high school and the 
receptive college courses become their handicap 
when they enter the graduate school, and still more 
when they attempt to compose music, or write 
dramas, or produce scientific treatises, or narrate 
a nation's history. It is not a defect, but it is a 
difference. The absorption and communication of 
details as details make woman as a rule a better 
teacher in the elementary grades of teaching than 
man can ever be. The grasp of underlying general 
principles often imfits the productive scholar for 
elementary instruction. This differentiation of func- 
tion is a decree of nature, and one which it is use- 
less for us to fight against, and highly profitable 
for us to recognize, — for nineteen women out of 
every twenty who set before themselves the ideal 
of productive scholarship will be doomed to disap- 



208 THE WORTH OF 

pointment. They will make vast acquisitions, and 
impart them to others skillfully and effectively; 
only the very exceptional few will achieve that or- 
ganic insight, that masterly unification, which will 
make their contribution to the subject individual 
and enduring. 

Still, while productive scholarship is so rare a 
gift in women that nothing less than the most un- 
mistakable compulsion of genius should ever lead 
a woman to stake her happiness and success in hfe 
on its achievement, some women have this capacity, 
and as we all agree a perfect right to its exercise. 
Then arises the further question. Can she afford to 
follow this ideal, even if there is a prospect of suc- 
cess ? Is success worth achieving, considering the 
high cost at which it comes ? I am not speaking of 
the writing of stories and verses, and kindred forms 
of serving up nature and human experience for 
agreeable consumption, in which women easily and 
conspicuously excel. I am speaking of strictly sci- 
entific work. We have already seen jvhat an ab- 
straction from life, what an absorption in dry and 
dreary details, what a withdrawal from the lighter 
and gayer sides of life this usually involves for 
men. Knowing this tremendous cost, could you 
wish it for a daughter whom you love ? Can you 
choose it for any considerable number of women ? 
For my part, I think not. It is neither for the 
happiness of individual women nor for the welfare 



THE WOMANLY IDEAL 209 

of the world that many should set their hearts 
upon productive scholarship as the goal of their 
ambition or the test of their success. 

I have in mind a woman who received, on grad- 
uation from college, the highest academic honor* 
then attainable in this country, became a favorite 
pupil of learned German professors, and published 
an erudite treatise on the most out-of-the-way and 
unprofitable subject which German ingenuity could 
set a promising pupil to studying. She had every 
prospect of distinction as a grammarian and philo- 
logist. Suddenly she gave up all aspiration in this 
direction with the remark, " The price of produc- 
tive scholarship is one few women can ajffiord to 
pay," and entered heartily and enthusiastically into 
all womanly interests and social enjoyments. She 
felt that she could do either one of these two things, 
but could not carry both together, and she chose 
the womanly in preference to the scholastically 
productive as the better part. To be sure she con- 
tinued to be a university professor for several years. 
From a fairly intimate acquaintance with her both 
before and after this change in ideal and ambition, 
I am confident that she lived a vastly happier life 
herself, and contributed a vast deal more that was 
of value to the world, by this deliberate abandon- 
ment of the ideal of scholarly production, and the 
acceptance of the ideal of giving and receiving in- 
tellectual and social enjoyment. Woman sells her 



210 THE WORTH OF 

birthright for a mess of miserable pottage when- 
ever she sacrifices her womanly ideals of perfect 
health for self and offspring, radiating happiness 
for herself and her family and friends, for aca- 
demic honor, or public fame, or social distinction. 

There will always be some scholarly and admin- 
istrative work, some speaking on platforms, some 
organization of clubs, some leadership in social 
movements for women to do ; and there will always 
be raised up women who, while their hearts are set 
on higher and better things, will do these things 
brilliantly and effectively, modestly confessing to 
themselves and to their intimate friends that all 
these things are for them merely a second best. 
All honor to these noble women who do such manly 
work with no loss of loyalty to the distinctive 
womanly ideals. 

But woe to the woman who for an instant lets 
herself suppose that these things in themselves 
are her supreme ideals, who sighs for them if she 
has them not, or is vain or even contented if she 
has them alone. In scholarship and the public life 
to which scholarship affords the introduction, man 
and woman have equally honorable though dif- 
ferently specialized faculties and functions ; and 
though in actual practice there will be considerable 
interchange of work, there never ought to be the 
slightest confusion of ideals. Men must be judged 
mainly by the work they do, and forgiven for what 



THE WOMANLY IDEAL 211 

they are not. Women must be judged for what they 
are, and for the happiness that radiates from their 
presence; and even when to what they are and 
what they give they add conspicuous performance, 
we shall continue to esteem them not for the work 
performed, but for the love and joy that shme 
through their life and work. Man's intellectual 
work is done like the work of a mill-stream, by 
conscious and deliberate direction. Woman's in- 
tellectual work is done chiefly like that of the sun, 
— by unconscious and unpretentious radiation. 

Li politics the distinction between production 
and consumption likewise will guide us to a true 
discrimination between the manly and the womanly 
ideal. No one to-day expects or desires woman to 
be a mere passive spectator of public events. Public 
sentiment rules the Kepublic; and in the forma- 
tion and direction of public sentiment woman is 
expected to do her full share. On questions of 
personal and public morality, on all questions of 
education, on questions that affect the family, on 
questions of health and sanitation, on questions 
that involve peace or war, on questions of parks 
and playgrounds, on questions of child labor, on 
questions of honest and efficient administration, 
woman's interest is as great, and her influence on 
public sentiment ought to be as potent, as the in- 
fluence of man. The woman who cares for none of 
these things is unfit for the distinctively domestic 



212 THE WORTH OF 

duties, unworthy to train the children of the Re- 
public. 

Because at these and similar points woman feels 
the effects of good or bad government more in- 
tensely; because she is more sensitive to the suf- 
fering caused by bad measures and the happiness 
insured by good measures and good institutions, or 
in other words, because she is the more appreciative 
and discriminating consumer of the benefits which 
good government confers, her intelligent interest in 
these matters, her honest praise, her frank criticism, 
her individual and collective expression of judgment, 
are most welcome and valuable additions to the 
forces which make for good government and free 
institutions. When in social settlements she comes 
into close first-hand contact with the darker side of 
our civilization, then she speaks with an authority 
on certain aspects of the social problem which men, 
if they are wise, must implicitly obey. 

More important than all this, however, is the 
service which modest, unassuming women render 
in their families and homes, by making home so 
sweet a place, family ties so dear a bond, that they 
give to country its tenderest associations and its 
most priceless worth ; so that men count it a glo- 
rious privilege to serve and labor, and live and die 
to upbuild and defend their native land. If men 
furnish the power by which, women contribute the 
ends for which, the country is maintained. Though 



THE WOMANLY IDEAL 213 

of a different order, these quiet, silent, modest ser- 
vices of women are no less vital and no less honor- 
able than the services of men in legislative halls or 
on the field of battle. 

On the other hand, political production, the 
formulation of public policy, the enactment and 
enforcement of law, the administration of the 
machinery of government, the conduct of diplo- 
macy and war, the imposition of taxes and the 
appropriation of revenue, the appointment and 
direction of the vast army of employees in the civil 
service is best left in the hands of men. For all 
this is simply business on a grand scale, compli- 
cated, however, by the corruption of spoilsmen, the 
heat of party strife, the vicious notion that getting 
something for nothing out of the public is not quite 
the same thing as stealing from one's neighbor. 

All this is rough work. To accomplish the ideal 
is out of the question. The best one can do is to 
aim at justice, and get as much of it accomplished 
as the men one has to deal with and the conditions 
under which one has to work will permit. Mistakes 
are unavoidable, compromises are inevitable, asso- 
ciation with corrupt and dishonest men unescapable. 

Now the plain fact is that men can bring^a fairly 
decent order out of this moral chaos, and they can 
do it without serious impairment of their personal 
character. Between standing out for an impossible 
abstract perfection, on the one hand, and letting 



214 THE WORTH OF 

evil go unliindered and unpunished, men know how 
to steer a middle course which gives good govern- 
ment and just laws on the whole, and puts a limit 
if not an end to fraud and corruption. 

Women as a rule, by the very fineness of their 
nature, the sharpness of their moral distinctions, 
the uncompromising character of their personal 
likes and dislikes, are unfitted for this task of get- 
ting the best that is practically attainable out of 
conditions where abstract insistence on the ideal 
best often only amounts to practical surrender to 
the actual worst. I should admit rare exceptions 
here as everywhere. But not one woman in ten 
thousand is by nature fitted to enter this arena 
without either injury to the public or else harden- 
ing and deterioration for herself. 

The separation of production and consumption 
— of efficient cause by which and of final cause for 
which the Republic is maintained — is grounded 
in an eternal distinction of nature which runs in- 
finitely deeper than any question of merely formal 
right. The arrangement by which women mould 
sentiment, and men cast and count the ballots that 
register it, by which men make laws and women 
inspire the loyalty and seK-control that obeys them, 
by which women give to institutions a sacredness 
which makes men glad to lay down their lives in 
their defense, is a wise and beneficent arrangement ; 
and any tinkering of men or meddling of women 



THE WOMANLY IDEAL 215 

to bring about a change or confusion of these func- 
tions will involve a weakening of men and a coars- 
ening of women, and tend toward the deterioration 
of society and the downfall of the state. 

Li politics, as in business and scholarship, the 
question is not one of abstract rights. The only 
foundation of right is the good. If women would 
be happier, and make happier homes, if they could 
contribute a refining influence to politics without 
becoming themselves coarsened and hardened by 
dwelling in the atmosphere of selfishness and strife, 
if unrestricted participation in politics was what any 
considerable number of sane women wanted for 
themselves, or any sane men wanted for their wives 
and sisters and daughters, of course they could have 
it for the asking. But the work to be done, the 
conditions under which it must be done, are so for- 
eign to the true feminine ideal, and the feminine 
ideal is of so much more value to the country and 
to the world than any poor, ineffectual attempt to 
imitate the masculine ideal ever could be, that we 
may confidently trust that the day when women will 
desert the feminine for the masculine contribution 
to the pohtical life of the country is put farther off 
by every attempted agitation in its behalf. The 
more woman's true contribution to national preserva- 
tion, national integrity, and national honor is rightly 
appreciated, the more all sane men and wise women 
will unite in the determination that it shall never 



216 THE WORTH OF 

be abandoned or exchanged for the slight and dubi- 
ous addition she might make to political legislation 
and administration. The more we respect and honor 
woman, the more we shall understand that she al- 
ready has what, if a different, is a coordinate part 
and privilege in determining the character and des- 
tiny of the Republic. 

The masculine and the feminine ideals are equally 
precious; and we respect and preserve their pre- 
ciousness, not by merging them into a neutral and 
colorless identity, but by emphasizing to the utmost 
the deep distinctions between them. You confer no 
favor upon two mountains by filling up the valley 
between them, but rather reduce them both to the 
dead level of a monotonous and uninteresting table- 
land. In industry and education, in politics and in 
religion, our aim henceforth should be not toward 
a stupid equality, with interchange of imitated func- 
tions, but toward differentiation, — giving as far as 
possible the direction and control of economic pro- 
duction to strong and forceful men, and the super- 
intendence and ministry of consumption to wise and 
gentle women ; giving for the most part the hard, 
dry task of scholarly investigation and formulation 
to the absorbing and protracted toil of men, and 
the appreciation of results and the impartation of 
established knowledge to the quick wits of women ; 
giving the strife and turmoil, the compromise and 
diplomacy of politics to the firm will and sound 



THE WOMANLY IDEAL 217 

judgment of men, and the things that make a 
country worth living and dying for to the warm 
hearts of our women. 

Still though thus clearly distinguishable, like the 
convex and concave aspects of our curve, these two 
are inseparable. Each requires the grafting upon it 
of the virtues of the other to make itseK complete. 
When we are once assured that the boy is strong, 
sturdy, brave, resolute, a hard worker, a fierce 
fighter, a close thinker, a clear reasoner, then the 
more aesthetic grace and social charm he inherits 
from his mother, or borrows from his own or other 
people's sisters, the better. But after all we really 
weigh and measure him in terms of the manly 
ideal; and no adventitious feminine accomplish- 
ments can save him from our contempt, if he has 
given in exchange for them aught of masculine 
ruggedness and manly power to make his will effec- 
tive in the hard world of stubborn physical facts 
and hostile human forces. 

Precisely so, when once we are assured that the 
woman holds the womanly ideals of modest ministry, 
generous sympathy, unselfish service and unnoted 
sacrifice closest to her heart, then we are glad if 
to these she adds business efficiency, scholarly at- 
tainments, public influence. All we insist upon is 
simply this: that as the manly ideal is so essential 
to man that in comparison with it for him all fem- 
inine graces and embellishments are but as the dust 



218 WORTH OF THE WOMANLY IDEAL 

in the balance, so for woman the womanly ideal is 
the one thing needful ; and however much she may 
add to it in the way of masculine achievement, the 
womanly ideal remains to the end the only and all- 
sufficient condition of her real happiness and her 
highest usefulness ; her unique and supreme claim 
to personal friendship and affection, to social con- 
sideration and esteem. So precious to woman her- 
self, so priceless to the world, is the inalienable 
worth of the womanly ideal. 



XI 

The Earnings of College Graduates 

THE value of a college education cannot be 
measured in money. No graduate would give 
up what his college education has done for him, if 
offered two or three times his present remunera- 
tion in exchange. To do so would be selling a large 
part of his soul. Neither does any worthy grad- 
uate select his vocation mainly with a view to the 
remuneration it will bring. He chooses the voca- 
tion which appeals to his capacity and interest. 

Still the pecuniary aspects of college education 
and professional success are interesting, and may 
serve to reassure persons who for themselves or their 
children choose college and vocation on higher 
grounds. I have asked such of the graduates of 
Bowdoin College as were willing to do so to give 
me their annual earnings, their class, and their vo- 
cation. Of those who are engaged in remunerative 
employment 774, which is about half the number 
of graduates in such employment, have replied. 
The replies give earnings, not income, — which 
in most cases would be considerably more. Those 
whose earnings are largest, for obvious reasons were 
most reluctant to reply. Although several are earn- 
ing more than fl7,000, none who were earning 



220 THE EARNINGS OF 

more than that amount replied. In the case of 
journalism the number engaged in that profession 
is too small to make the returns valuable ; and the 
fact that there are two or three exceptionally suc- 
cessful editors in this small number gives to the 
results in that profession a more optimistic aspect 
than wider induction would confirm. While returns 
from half the graduates of a single college are not 
conclusive, yet in a general way they indicate the 
pecuniary value of a coUege education, and the 
relative remuneration to be obtained in different 
professions. 

The table gives the result classified by decades, 
and also by vocations. Vocations represented by 
not more than ten persons, like civil engineering 
and farming, are classified as miscellaneous. Since 
the first ten years are hardly a fair test, I have 
added to the averages for each decade, and for the 
total period, the average for those who have been 
out of college more than ten years. This latter 
average is the most instructive. It shows that, after 
the first ten years, medicine leads, with an average 
remuneration of $4687. Law comes second, with 
$4577. Journalism third (though as explained this 
is probably misleading), with $4271. Business 
fourth, with $3790. Banking fifth, with $3718. 
Government Employment sixth, with $3230. 
Miscellaneous pursuits seventh, with $2867. Ed- 
ucation eighth, with $2258. The Ministry ninth 



COLLEGE GRADUATES 



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222 EARNINGS OF COLLEGE GRADUATES 

and last, with f 1659. The average earnings of the 
493 persons reporting who have been out of college 
more than ten years is $3356. 

Medicine is the profession in which one may 
acquire considerable earning power most quickly, 
though the earning capacity of the lawyer holds out 
better in the later years. 

In law, medicine, journalism, business, and mis- 
cellaneous pursuits the best period is from thirty to 
forty years out of college ; that is, between the ages 
of fifty and sixty. In the ministry, on the other 
hand, this period, with the exception of the first 
and last years, is least remunerative of all. 

While in the earlier years the college graduate 
has, like other people, a hard struggle financially, 
earning on an average only $1312 during the first 
ten years ; yet after that time he earns much more 
than the average man of good heredity and good 
opportunities who has not had a college education, 
and his earning power holds out weU through life. 



XII 

A Great College President 

CONSIDERED merely as a literary product, 
the collected educational addresses of Presi- 
dent Eliot, published in book form, are in no wise 
remarkable. The unit of his style is the word ; 
that is always exact, always weighty. Hence in- 
inscriptions and characterizations where heroic 
achievements are cast into a sentence or a scholarly 
career is coined into a phrase, he is incomparable. 
In " Educational Reform " there is an occasional gem 
like this : " Two kinds of men make good teachers, 
— young men and men who never grow old." For 
the most part, however, we get plain truths plainly 
stated, with little of that magic power to light up 
present facts with glowing reminiscences of kindred 
facts and fancies drawn from far-off lands and days, 
and to set the sentences to throbbing in rhythmic 
sympathy with the pulsations of the thought, which 
makes literary form as precious as the substance 
it conveys. Nor is the sum total of ideas set forth 
so very great. One who undertakes to read the col- 
lection through consecutively is soon reminded of 
the jury lawyer's remark, " Reiteration is the only 
effective figure of speech." 

Nevertheless, this book marks with absolute pre- 



224 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

cision our one great educational epoch. For tlie 
author is no mere essayist or orator. As we flock 
to hear Nansen's lectures, not for their literary 
charm or the range of new information they con- 
vey, but because we want to see the man who flung 
his ideas in the face of incredulous geographical 
societies, and built them into the Fram, and froze 
them into the ice floe, and drifted on them month 
after month, and drove them into his dogs in that 
last desperate dash for the pole, — so here we see 
the man who for thirty critical years, as prime 
minister of our educational realm, has defied pre- 
judice, conquered obstacles, lived down opposition, 
and reorganized our entire educational system from 
top to bottom. As Wordsworth said of his French 
revolutionary friend, Beaupuis, we feel that our 
educational institutions are 

standing on the brink 
Of some great trial, and we hear the voice 
Of one devoted, one whom circumstance 
Hath called upon to embody his deep sense 
In action, give it outwardly a shape, 
And that of benediction, to the world. 

The one supremely eloquent feature of these 
essays and addresses is the dates they bear. To 
appreciate their significance, it is necessary to re- 
call briefly educational history since he became 
President of Harvard. Our first witness shall be 
the Harvard Catalogue for the year 1869-70. 



A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 225 

There is a single set of requirements for admis- 
sion : the traditional Latin, Greek, and mathema- 
tics, with so much ancient history as, in the words 
of the President, *'a clever boy could commit to 
memory in three or four days." Though some dozen 
electives are offered in each of the last three years, 
yet the backbone of the curriculum consists of 
prescribed studies supposed to be equally essential 
and profitable for all. Among the many things 
required of Freshmen are Champlin's " First Prin- 
ciples of Ethics " and Bulfinch's " Evidences of 
Christianity." " The Student's Gibbon, about 
twenty selected chapters," " Stewart's Philosophy 
of the Mind, about 360 pages," and " Cooke's 
Chemical Philosophy, about 180 pages," are among 
the half-dozen things all Sophomores are compelled 
to learn. " Bowen's Logic, 313 pages, Reid's 
Essays (selections), Hamilton's Metaphysics, 300 
pages, and Lardner's Optics, chapters i-vii, xiii, 
and portions of chapter xiv," are required of all 
Juniors. In the first term of Senior year the re- 
quirements are, " Philosophy, Bowen's Ethics and 
Metaphysics, Bowen's Political Economy, Modern 
History, Guizot's and Arnold's Lectures, Story's 
Abridged Commentaries on the Constitution ; " 
and in the second term, '' History, Hallam's Middle 
Ages, one volume. Religious Instruction, Political 
Economy, Bowen's finished." It is not so much 
the extent as the nature of these requirements — 



226 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

the large place given to metaphysics, and that of 
a single school in dogmatic form, finally narrowed 
down to the single learned author in charge of the 
department ; the specification of the precise num- 
ber of pages and fractions of a chapter ; the fact 
that instruction in science is primarily concerned 
with pages and chapters anyway ; and the notion 
that whether in one book or many a subject like 
political economy can be " finished " — that makes 
us rub our eyes and look twice at the title-page, to 
see if this indeed can be a catalogue of Harvard 
under President Eliot. 

Against this hide-bound uniformity, this dead 
prescription, this dogmatism of second-rate minds, 
this heterogeneous aggregate of unrelated frag- 
ments of instruction, elementary from beginning to 
end, by which, as he says, " the managers of Amer- 
ican colleges have made it impossible for the stu- 
dent to get a thorough knowledge of any subject 
whatever," the young President hurled his ideas of 
liberty in the choice of studies ; absolute freedom 
of investigation in teacher and taught ; science by 
first-hand observation and fresh experiment and 
careful induction ; philosophy and religion by can- 
did criticism of all proposed solutions of the prob- 
lems of the spiritual life ; the supreme worth of 
the diJffierences of individuals from one another in 
aptitude for acquisition and capacity for service. 
This, which has been one of his greatest contri- 



A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 227 

butions to education, was not so hard a task to 
accomplish at Harvard as it would have been else- 
where; for a respectable beginning had already 
been made, and the needed funds for its develop- 
ment were forthcoming; yet it was not without 
hard and steady fighting for each inch of ground 
that the principle was finally established through- 
out the college, when the Freshman work became 
largely elective in 1884. The triimiph of the prin- 
ciple in the matter of requirements for admission, 
with all the added reality and life that it brings to 
secondary instruction, did not find complete accept- 
ance with the faculty until 1897. 

In the meantime President Eliot was fighting 
the same battle in behalf of the colleges of the 
country at large. Though wielding the enormous 
power and resources of Harvard with tremendous 
vigor, and making every move redound to her glory 
and advantage, he has ever had the most generous 
desire that others should share in whatever good 
thing Harvard has wrought out. Doubtless his 
mode of tendering his assistance has been open to 
misunderstanding on the part of those who did not 
know the man. Year after year, from 1870 down 
to 1888, he went into the Association of New Eng- 
land Colleges, pointing out to the representatives 
of sister institutions the defects of prescription and 
the blessings of freedom. A single specimen of 
the frankness he was wont to exercise in the pre- 



228 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

sentation of this theme is preserved in an essay 
now reprinted from the " Century Magazine " for 
1884, in which he says : " No knowledge of either 
French or German is required for admission to 
Yale College, and no instruction is provided in 
either language before the beginning of the Junior 
year. In other words, Yale College does not sug- 
gest that the preparatory schools ought to teach 
either French or German, does not give its stu- 
dents the opportunity of acquiring these languages 
in season to use them in other studies, and does 
not offer them any adequate opportunity of be- 
coming acquainted with the literature of either 
language before they take the Bachelor's degree. 
Could we have stronger evidence than this of the 
degraded condition of French and German in the 
mass of our schools and colleges ? " Inasmuch as 
men like President Porter and President Seelye 
were not always able to appreciate the disinter- 
ested devotion to the true welfare of their respec- 
tive institutions which President Eliot was wont 
thus to manifest on all occasions, the meetings 
of the Association of New England Colleges were 
often quite animated, in the days when this reform 
was being extended from Harvard to her sister in- 
stitutions. To these meetings he has always come 
early, and he has stayed late ; bringing with him 
definite topics for discussion, and urging his asso- 
ciates to some positive educational advance. In 



A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 229 

1894 he urged in the Association, and later re- 
peatedly elsewhere, the establishment of a common 
board of examiners which should hold examinations 
at two or three hundred points throughout the 
United States, and whose certificates should be 
accepted by all the cooperating institutions. Al- 
though a large number is desirable for such coop- 
eration, he proposed to start with five colleges be- 
sides his own. And yet not five institutions could be 
found sufficiently ready to cooperate in such a vital 
and far-reaching scheme for elevating secondary 
education throughout the country, and saving us 
from the Dead Sea of superficiality. So very rare, 
even in educational institutions, is the disposition 
to put the interests of the community first, and 
to find the true interest of a particular college 
in generous devotion to these objective ends, that 
even the disinterestedness of this measure was sus- 
pected in quarters which ought to have been above 
the capacity for such suspicion. 

At the very first President Eliot took in hand 
the improvement of professional training. In 1869 
he found the Medical School little more than an ir- 
responsible commercial venture. There were no re- 
quirements for admission ; attendance was required 
for two courses of lectures only, brief in themselves, 
and still farther abbreviated by the failure of the 
great majority of students to attend during the 
svunmer term. A student who passed successfully 



230 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

five out of nine oral examinations, of a few min- 
utes' duration each, received a diploma; although 
as came out in the discussion of this matter in the 
Board of Overseers, he might not know the limit of 
safety in the administration of morphine, and one 
had actually killed two early patients in conse- 
quence. As the President says, '' Under this system 
young men might receive the degree of Doctor of 
Medicine who had had no academic training what- 
ever, and who were ignorant of four out of nine 
fundamental subjects." At his suggestion, the finan- 
cial administration of the school was placed at once 
in the hands of the treasurer of the university ; the 
course of instruction was extended to three years 
of two equal terms at which attendance was required ; 
the course was made progressive throughout the 
three years ; laboratory work was added to the 
didactic lectures ; and written examinations were 
distributed through the three years, all of which 
each student was required to pass. By 1874 the 
students were divided into three classes, with 
rigid requirements for promotion. In 1877 physics 
and Latin were required for admission. To these 
requirements additions have repeatedly been made ; 
so that now candidates must present a degree from 
a reputable college or scientific school unless ad- 
mitted by special vote of the faculty in each case. 
In 1892 the course was extended to four years. 
Since 1888 the elective principle has been recog- 



A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 231 

nized in the latter part of the course. President 
Eliot's influence has done much to raise the pro- 
fession of medicine from the refuge of " unculti- 
vated men, with scanty knowledge of medicine or 
of surgery," to a position in which it is fully wor- 
thy of his high tribute when he says, " It offers 
to young men the largest opportunities for disin- 
terested, devoted, and heroic service." 

The Harvard Law School in 1869 was another 
illustration of the remark which President Eliot 
made in an address at the inauguration of President 
Gilman : " During the past forty years the rules 
which governed admission to the honorable and 
learned professions of law and medicine have been 
carelessly relaxed, and we are now suffering great 
losses and injuries, both material and moral, in con- 
sequence." Dean Langdell describes the condition 
as follows : " In respect to instruction there was no 
division of the school into classes, but with a single 
exception all the instruction given was intended for 
the whole school. There never had been any at- 
tempt by means of legislation to raise the standard 
of education at the school, nor to discriminate be- 
tween the capable and the incapable, the diligent 
and the idle. It had always been deemed a prime 
object to attract students to the school, and with 
that view as little as possible was required of them. 
Students were admitted without any evidence of 
academic acquirements ; and they were sent out 



232 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

from it, with a degree, without any evidence of legal 
acquirements. The degree of Bachelor of Laws 
was conferred solely upon evidence that the stu- 
dent had been nominally a member of the school 
for a certain length of time and had paid his tui- 
tion fees, the longest time being one and a half 
years." At once a new course was established, and 
an examination was held for the degree. Early in 
the next academic year the first recorded faculty 
meeting was held ; and of the 198 meetings regu- 
larly held during the succeeding twenty-four years, 
the President of the university presided at all but 
five. In 1877 the course of study was extended to 
three years, and the tuition fee was raised to $150. 
Since 1896 only graduates of approved colleges 
have been admitted as candidates for the degree. 

The Divinity School in 1869 was a feeble insti- 
tution, to which only six pages were assigned in the 
university catalogue ; requiring no academic prepa- 
ration beyond " a knowlege of the branches of ed- 
ucation commonly taught in the best academies and 
high schools." Only five of the thirty-six students 
had received a degree of Bachelor of Arts or Mas- 
ter of Arts, whereas six needy persons who were 
recipients of such degrees could have 1350 apiece 
each year for the asking ; and a fund yielding from 
$150 to $200 apiece was divided among aU appli- 
cants in the regular or partial course, regardless of 
ability or scholarship. The five professors were aU 



A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 233 

adherents of a single sect. President Eliot from 
the first contended that " the gratuitous character 
of the ordinary theological training supplied by 
denominational seminaries is an injury to the Pro- 
testant ministry. It would be better for the pro- 
fession, on the whole, if no young men could get 
into it except those whose parents are able to sup- 
port them, and those who have capacity and energy 
enough to earn their own way. These tests consti- 
tute a natural method of selection, which has long 
been applied in the other learned professions to 
their great advantage. Exceptions should be made 
in favor of needy young men of decided merit and 
promise, to whom scholarships should be awarded 
on satisfactory tests of ability and character." Ac- 
cordingly, in the year 1872-73 the promiscuous 
distribution of aid to aU applicants in equal parts 
was stopped, and scholarships were established in 
its place. In order that " the mendicant element 
in theological education might be completely elimi- 
nated, and the Protestant ministry put on a thor- 
oughly respectable footing in modern society," the 
President recommended in 1890 that the tuition 
fee be raised to the same amount as in other de- 
partments of the university. After much doubt and 
misgiving on the part of the friends of the school, 
this bold step was taken in 1897. Since 1882 a 
college education or its equivalent has been required 
of candidates for the degree of Bachelor of Divinity. 



234 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

The President has always been the earnest advo- 
cate of absolute freedom in theological study. In his 
essay On the Education of Ministers, he commends 
the scientific spirit in these terms : " This spirit 
seeks only the fact, without the slightest regard to 
consequences ; any twisting or obscuring of the fact 
to accommodate it to a preconceived theory, hope, 
or wish, any tampering with the actual result of 
investigation, is the unpardonable sin. It is a spirit 
at once humble and dauntless, patient of details, 
passionless but energetic, venturing into pathless 
wastes to bring back a fact, caring only for truth, 
candid as a still lake, expectant, unfettered, and 
tireless." All this, and much more to the same ef- 
fect, is admirable, and highly needed as a prophy- 
lactic against what he calls " the terrible stress of 
temptation to intellectual dishonesty" which besets 
the clerical profession. Yet when, as in his report 
for 1877-78 he went so far as to say, " The vari- 
ous philosophical theories and religious beliefs should 
be studied before, and not after, any of them are 
embraced," he fell into a one-sided intellectualism 
which gave some occasion for the widespread dis- 
trust of Harvard's religious leadership that prevailed 
twenty-five years ago. Intimate acquaintance with 
him, however, is pretty sure to convince one of the 
truth of the remark which President Tucker once 
made, speaking of persons engaged in coUege work, 
" President Eliot is the most religious man among 



A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 235 

us." His earnest efforts in establishing the present 
system of religious worship at Harvard, together 
with the influence of the philosophical professors 
in their doctrines of the glory of the imperfect, 
the world of description and the world of appre- 
ciation, and the will to believe, have done much 
to correct the earlier tendency, and to reestablish 
Harvard in the confidence of the community, as a 
centre of virtue and piety as well as of learning 
and research. 

President Eliot is a Unitarian, and glories in 
the critical candor and intellectual honesty of 
which, until quite recently, that denomination had 
held too nearly a monopoly. Yet he is too broad 
and fair-minded to think for an instant of leaving 
the theological department or the religious life of 
a great national university in the hands of a sin- 
gle sect, least of all in the hands of a sect which 
represents but one tenth of one per cent of the 
nation's population. Under his administration the 
Divinity School has become unsectarian in reality, 
as it always was in name. 

The condition of graduate work at Harvard in 
1869 can be inferred from the fact that the degree 
of Master of Arts was given to all graduates of 
three years' standing and of good moral charac- 
ter on payment of five dollars ; and no other de- 
gree beyond the Bachelor's was offered. The new 
President at once gave notice that the granting of 



236 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

Master's degrees on these easy terms would cease 
in 1872. After a year or two of fruitless experi- 
mentation with " university lectures," in 1872 the 
degrees of Master of Arts, Doctor of Science, and 
Doctor of Philosophy were offered on definite and 
exacting terms. In his report for 1876-77 we find 
the President quietly dropping the remark that, 
" for a few years to come, it is to the improvement 
of this department of the university that the at- 
tention of the governing boards may be most pro- 
fitably directed." As a result of that profitably 
directed attention. Harvard performed successfully 
the arduous and delicate task of rearing a great 
graduate school on the broad foundation of under- 
graduate work, without injury, but with positive 
inspiration and elevation to the latter. It was the 
surplus intellectual resources accumulated under 
the elective system which made possible that un- 
precedented educational feat. The graduate school 
has never resorted to the expedient of hiring its 
students by guarantees of large pecuniary assistance. 
President Eliot was among the first to perceive the 
danger of repeating the error which has resulted 
in overcrowding the clerical profession with weak- 
lings of all sorts, and thus lowering the tone of 
manliness and self-respect in the men who are to 
be college professors. There has been no disposi- 
tion to turn out Doctors as a matter of course after 
three years of mechanical work at some trivial 



A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 237 

task devised for the express purpose of grinding a 
thesis out of it. The school has steadfastly refused 
to confer the degree of Doctor on any man who 
has not grasped the subject as a whole, as well as 
developed some special aspect of it sufficiently to 
render him a competent, and, so far as training 
can contribute to it, an inspiring teacher. Not 
every one of the Doctors it has turned out will 
make a successful professor; but the system is 
not one which, by concentrating half-trained men 
almost exclusively on the narrowest of technical 
investigations, makes failure the rule, and success 
the miraculous exception. 

Having thus started every department of the 
university upon the pathway of reform. President 
Eliot next turned his attention to the secondary 
schools. As far back as his report for the year 
1873-74, he had called attention to " the great 
importance to the colleges and to the community 
that the way be kept wide open from the primary 
school to the professional school, for the poor as 
well as for the rich," and had said, " The desired 
connection between the secondary schools and the 
colleges might be secured by effecting certain 
changes in the requisitions for admission to college 
on the one hand, and in the studies of the existing 
high schools on the other. But this is not the place 
to discuss these changes at length." 

Seventeen years later he found the place for 



238 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

such discussion at the meeting of the National 
Educational Association, in a speech which led to 
the formation of the famous Committee of Ten, of 
which he was appointed chairman. By his prodi- 
gious labors on that committee he secured national 
sanction for his long-cherished views as to the 
worthlessness of short, scrappy information courses ; 
the earlier beginning in the elementary schools of 
such subjects as algebra, geometry, natural science, 
and modern languages ; " the correlation and asso- 
ciation of subjects with one another by the pro- 
grammes and by the actual teaching ; " emphasis 
on the supreme importance of thorough training in 
English ; the doctrine that secondary schools sup- 
ported at pubhc expense should be primarily for 
the many who do not pursue their education far- 
ther, and only incidentally for the few who are 
going to college ; the doctrine of the equal rank, 
for purposes of admission to college, of all subjects 
taught by proper methods with sufficient concen- 
tration, time allotment, and consecutiveness ; and 
the corollary thereof, that college requirements for 
admission should coincide with high-school require- 
ments for graduation. At the same time he secured 
the working out in detail of the practical applica- 
tion of these measures by representative experts in 
all the departments involved ; thus giving to second- 
ary education the greatest impulse in the direction 
of efficiency, variety, serviceableness, and vitality it 



A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 239 

,lias ever received, and winning the grandest vic- 
tory ever achieved in the field of American edu- 
cation. 

Nor did he stop there. Finding by actual experi- 
ment with schoolboys brought to his own study that 
the entire reading-matter included in a grammar- 
school course covering six years could be read aloud 
in forty-six hours, and that the work in arithmetic 
done during two years by giving one fifth of all the 
time of the school to it could be done by a bright 
boy fresh from the high school in fifteen hours ; 
finding by actual reading of everything used in that 
grammar school that the entire course was dull and 
destitute of human interest, consisting chiefly in the 
exercise of mere memory on such relatively useless 
matters as the capitals and boundaries of distant 
States ; finding that the children and the conunu- 
nity alike were suffering irreparable harm because 
the peculiar natural aptitudes of individual children 
were not appealed to, and consequently not devel- 
oped, — in 1891, after considerable discussion, and 
in spite of some opposition directed from the head- 
quarters of conservatism, he secured from the As- 
sociation of New England Colleges, at its annual 
meeting at Brown University, an indorsement of his 
plan for " shortening and enriching the granunar- 
school course." The recommendations then made 
covered five points : elementary natural history in 
the earlier years, to be taught by demonstrations 



240 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

and practical exercises, with suitable apparatus, 
rather than from books ; elementary physics in the 
later years, to be taught by the laboratory method ; 
algebra and geometry at the age of twelve or thir- 
teen ; and French, German, or Latin, or any two 
of these languages, from and after the age of ten. 
During the years immediately following he was 
busy advocating these reforms in primary and sec- 
ondary education ; always resting his argument on 
the supreme importance, both for the children and 
for the community, that each individual's pecidiar 
powers should be trained to the highest degree, as a 
means to that equality of opportunity which is the 
glory of a true democracy, and that diversity of 
talent and function which is essential to happy and 
useful social life ; and pointing out that these re- 
forms were quite as much in the interest of the 
mauy whose education ends at the grammar school 
or high school as for those who go to college. 

In psychological analyses of the process of " ap- 
perception " and the related realm of " child study," 
President Eliot has had but scanty interest. He 
has rather taken it for granted that if the table 
is spread with a feast of sufficient freshness and 
variety, and presided over by a tactful and gener- 
ous host or hostess, the children can be counted on 
to get enough to eat ; even if no prepared food is 
provided in powdered form, and although the host- 
ess herself may be unable to delineate the precise 



A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 241 

details of the physiological processes of mastica- 
tion, swallowing, digestion, and assimilation. His 
emphasis has always been upon the substance of 
the truth presented, not on the form of its appre- 
hension by the receiving mind. 

There have been men in our colleges more gifted 
than President Eliot in supplementing scanty re- 
sources and meagre equipment by the power of 
direct personal inspiration ; though in recent years 
he has made great gains in this respect, and his 
addresses on enlistment at the outbreak of the 
Spanish war, and on a memorial for those who 
died, rank among the most influential and uplift- 
ing counsels ever given by college officers to college 
students. And while other presidents may have 
been more expeditious in creating culture out of 
cash, he has never forgotten that " a quarter of one 
per cent means a new professorship ; " has never 
been backward either in creating financial demands 
or in searching for fresh sources of supply. Yet he 
has never been in the least degree servile toward 
rich benefactors, but rather inclined to err in the 
direction complained of by an early benefactor 
whom Professor Dunbar reports as saying of the 
President, " He comes to me for my money and 
my advice ; and, like the women in the Scripture, 
the one is taken and the other left." 

Even in the brief sketch of reforms given above, 
the reader must have noticed the long lapse of time 



242 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

between the first prophecy of a reform and its ful- 
fillment. When President Eliot was elected, George 
S. Hillard, meeting him on the street, said to him, 
" Do you know what qualities you will need most 
out there at Harvard ? " President Eliot replied 
that he supposed he would need industry, courage, 
and the like. ^'No," said Mr. Hillard. "What 
you will need is patience — patience — patience." 
So it has proved. All these reforms have required 
ten, twenty, or thirty years for their accomplish- 
ment. Yet this marvelous patience has been no 
idle waiting for the lapse of time, but the steady 
pressure of one who was confident that he was 
right, and sure that, if urged at every opportu- 
nity, the right would gain adherents and ultimately 
prevail. 

President Eliot's reforms have all been rooted in 
principles and purposes which at bottom are moral 
and religious. He has gone up and down the whole 
length of our educational line, condemning every 
defect, denouncing every abuse, exposing every 
sham, rebuking every form of incompetence and 
inefficiency, as treason to the truth, an injury to 
the community, a crime against the individual. To 
his mind, intent on making God's richest gifts 
available for the blessing of mankind, a dull gram- 
mar school is an instrument of intellectual abor- 
tion ; uniformity in secondary schools is a slow 
starvation process ; paternalism and prescription in 



A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 243 

college is a dwarfing and stunting of the powers on 
wluch tlie prosperity of a democratic society must 
rest; superficial legal training is partnership in 
robbery; inadequate medical education is whole- 
sale murder; dishonest theological instruction is 
an occasion of stumbling more to be dreaded than 
" that a great millstone should be hanged about 
his neck, and that he should be cast into the depths 
of the sea." 

Such has been the work of this educational re- 
former. What, then, has been his reward? For 
the first twenty-five years he was misunderstood, 
misrepresented, maligned, hated with and without 
cause. It may be that it is an essential element of 
the reformer's make-up that, in order to hold firmly 
and tenaciously his own views against a hostile 
world, he should be somewhat lacking in sensitive- 
ness, and at times appear to take a hostile attitude 
toward those who differ from him. This, at any 
rate, seems to have been characteristic of President 
Eliot during the early years of his long fight for 
educational reform. In later years, now that most 
of his favorite reforms are well launched, and his 
services in their behalf are acknowledged with grati- 
tude on all sides, there has been manifest a great 
change, amounting to the kindliest appreciation of 
temperaments widely different from his own. Even 
in the days of his apparent hardness he was never 
known to cherish personal animosity on account of 



244 A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

difference of views. At the time when the fight 
was hottest in his own faculty, meeting an assistant 
professor, most outspoken in antagonism to all his 
favorite measures, who had received a call to go 
elsewhere, he said to him, " I suppose you under- 
stand that your opposition to my policy will not in 
the slightest degree interfere with* your promotion 
here." Partly owing to the triumph of his views 
even in the minds of most of his old opponents 
who survive, partly owing to the change which the 
years with their -increasing cares and sorrows have 
wrought in the man himself, he has come to be 
universally trusted, admired, and loved by all who 
know him well. Yet his chief reward has been 
that which he commended to another, " the great 
happiness of devoting one's self for life to a noble 
work without reserve, or stint, or thought of self, 
looking for no advancement, hoping for nothing 
again." 

No one can begin to measure the gain to civ- 
ilization and human happiness his services have 
wrought. As compared with what would have been 
accomplished by a series of conservative clergy- 
men, or ornate figure-heads, or narrow speciahsts, 
or even mere business men such as by the unin- 
formed he has most erroneously sometimes been 
supposed to be, his leadership has doubled the rate 
of educational advance not in Harvard alone, but 
throughout the United States. He has sought to 



A GREAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 245 

extend the helping hand of sympathy and appreci- 
ation to every struggling capacity in the humblest 
grammar grade ; to stimulate it into joyous blos- 
soming under the sunshine of congenial studies 
throughout the secondary years ; to bring it to a 
sturdy and sound maturity in the atmosphere of 
liberty in college life ; and finally, by stern selec- 
tion and thorough specialization, to gather a har- 
vest of experts in all the higher walks of life, on 
whose skill, knowledge, integrity, and self-sacrifice 
their less trained fellows can implicitly rely for 
higher instruction, professional counsel, and public 
leadership. In consequence of these comprehensive 
reforms, we see the first beginnings of a rational 
and universal church, not separate from existing 
sects, but permeating aU ; property rights in all 
their subtle forms are more secure and well de- 
fined; hundreds of persons are alive to-day who 
under physicians of inferior training would have 
died long ago ; thousands of college students have 
had quickened within them a keen intellectual in- 
terest, an earnest spiritual purpose, a " personal 
power in action under responsibility," who under 
the old regime would have remained listless and 
indifferent; tens of thousands of boys and girls 
in secondary schools can expand their hearts and 
minds with science and history and the languages 
of other lands, who but for President Eliot would 
have been doomed to the monotonous treadmill of 



246 A GEEAT COLLEGE PRESIDENT 

formal studies for which they have no aptitude or 
taste ; and, as the years go by, hundreds of thou- 
sands of the children of the poor, in the precious 
tender years before their early drafting into lives 
of drudgery and toil, in place of the dry husks of 
superfluous arithmetic, the thrice-threshed straw 
of unessential grammar, and the innutritions shells 
of unrememberable geographical details, will get 
some brief glimpse of the wondrous loveliness of 
nature and her laws, some slight touch of inspira- 
tion from the words and deeds of the world's 
wisest and bravest men, to carry with them as a 
heritage to brighten their future humble homes 
and gladden all their after-lives. In such " good 
measure, pressed down, shaken together, running 
over," has there been given to this great educa- 
tional reformer, in return for generous and stead- 
fast service of his university, his fellow-men, his 
country, and his God, what, in true Puritan sim- 
plicity, he calls ''that finest luxury, to do some 
perpetual good in this world." 



xm 

The Personality of the Teacher ^ 

SOME people can teach school and other people 
can't. Some teachers have good order, as a 
matter of course, as soon as they set foot in a school 
class-room. Other teachers can never get anything 
more than the outward semblance of decorum, try 
as hard as they will ; and often cannot get even 
that. Some teachers the scholars all love. Other 
teachers they all hate. 

Some teachers a superintendent or president will 
jump at the chance to secure after a five minutes' 
interview. Others, equally scholarly, equally expe- 
rienced, equally well equipped with formal recom- 
mendations, go wandering from agency to agency, 
from one vacant place to another, only to find that 
some other applicant has secured or is about to 
secure the coveted position. 

For nearly twenty years I have had to employ 
teachers every year, and to recommend teachers 
to others. I have seen many succeed, and some 
fail. But I have never seen a success that could 

^ A more complete account of the philosophical principles here 
condensed and applied to the specific problems of the teacher may 
be found in From Epicurus to Christ, published by the Macmil- 
lan Co. 



248 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

be accounted for by scholarship and training alone. 
I have never seen a failure that I could not account 
for on other grounds. What is it, then, that makes 
one teacher popular, successful, wanted in a dozen 
different places ; and another equally weU trained, 
equally experienced, a dismal failure where he is, 
and wanted nowhere else ? 

The one word that covers all these qualities is 
personality ; that is the thing all wise employers of 
teachers seek to secure above all else. In colleges 
for men in New England it is absolutely imperative. 
In elementary and secondary schools, in colleges in 
other sections of the country, a teacher with serious 
defects of personality may be carried along by the 
momentum of the system, and the tact of superin- 
tendents and presidents. But in a men's college in 
New England a professor with seriously defective 
personality is simply impossible. The boys will 
either make him over into a decent man by the 
severest kind of discipline, or else they wiU turn 
him out. I have seen them do both more than 
once. A man who is egotistical, insincere, diplo- 
matic, mean, selfish, untruthful, cowardly, imfair, 
weak, is a person whom New England men stu- 
dents will not tolerate as a teacher. No amount of 
knowledge and reputation, no amount of backing 
from the administration, can save him. On the 
whole, I am glad that this is so. It makes the 
responsibility of selecting professors tremendous. 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 249 

But, on the whole, it secures in the end a better 
type of men for college professors than we should 
be likely to get if the office could be held on any 
easier terms. 

Now, personality is very largely a matter of 
heredity. Some people are born large-natured ; 
other people are born small-souled. The former are 
born to succeed ; the latter are born to fail in any 
work in which personality counts for so much as it 
does in teaching. People with these mean natures 
and small souls never ought to try to teach. They 
ought to get into some strictly mechanical work 
where skilled hands count for everything and 
warm hearts count for nothing. 

Still, personality, though largely dependent on 
heredity, is in great measure capable of cultivation. 
If it were not, it would be useless for me to talk 
about it here. Some teachers would be foreordained 
to succeed, others foreordained to fail ; and nothing 
but the process of natural selection after actual 
experience could separate those who are personally 
fit to teach from those who are not, and never can 
be. Our personality is largely an affair of our own 
making. Those who have weak points may, by 
thoughtfulness and resolution, strengthen them ; 
and those who are naturally strong, by effort may 
grow stronger still. How this may be done is what 
I am to try to tell. Fortunately, it is not a new 
story, but a very old one, at which the world has 



250 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

been working a long while. To our problem of 
personality the world has found five answers : the 
Epicurean, the Stoic, the Platonic, the Aristotelian, 
and the Christian. I shall present these five answers 
in order. Some of you will doubtless find that 
you can apply one of these principles ; others will 
find another principle the one of which they stand 
in need. I shall not undertake to make all that I 
say consistent. I shall be simply the mouthpiece 
of those five types of personality; and leave the 
reader to select what he needs ; and reject the rest 
as unprofitable. These five answers in brief are 
as follows. 

The Epicurean says : " Take into your life as 
many simple, natural pleasures as possible." The 
Stoic says : " Keep out of your mind all causes of 
anxiety and grief." The Platonist says : " Lift up 
your soul above the dust and drudgery of daily 
life, into the pure atmosphere of the perfect and 
the good." The Aristotelian says : " Organize your 
life by clear conception of the end for which you are 
living, seek diligently all means that further this 
end, and rigidly exclude all that would hinder it or 
distract you from it." The Christian says : " En- 
large your spirit to include the interest and aims of 
all the persons whom your life in any way affects." 

Any man or woman of average hereditary gifts, 
and ordinary scholarship and training, who puts 
these five principles in practice, will be a popu- 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 251 

lar, effective, happy, and successful teacher. Any 
teacher, however well equipped otherwise, who 
neglects any one of these principles will, to that 
extent, be thereby weakened, crippled, and disquali- 
fied for the work of teaching. Any person who 
should be found defective in the majority of these 
five requirements would be unfit to teach at all. 
Let us then take them in order, and test ourselves 
by them. First, the Epicurean. 

The Epicurean gospel is summed up best in 
Stevenson's lines, " The Celestial Surgeon : " — 

If I have faltered more or less 
In my great task of happiness; 
If I have moved among my race 
And shown no glorious morning face, 
If beams from happy human eyes 
Have moved me not; if morning skies, 
Books, and my food, and summer rain 
Knocked on my sullen heart in vain — 
Lord, thy most pointed pleasure take 
And stab my spirit broad awake : 
Or, Lord, if too obdurate I, 
Choose thou, before that spirit die, 
A piercing pain, a killing sin. 
And to my dead heart run them in. 

The one thing in which the teacher on no account 
must fail is this which Stevenson calls " Our gfeat 
task of happiness." The world is a vast reservoir 
of potential pleasure. It is our first business here, 
so says the Epicurean, for whom I am speaking 
now, to get at aU costs, save that of overbalancing 



252 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

pain, as many of these pleasures as we can. Doubt- 
less you will say, this is a very low ideal of life. 
Well, I admit that there are higher ideals, for the 
sake of which this ideal, to a considerable extent, 
must be sacrificed. I admit that the mother with a 
sick child, the scholar with a difficult problem, the 
statesman in a political campaign, all of us, in fact, 
ought to have higher ideals, and sacrifice this ideal 
of pleasure to them. But you cannot sacrifice it 
unless in the first place you have it, and care very 
much for it. 

If we grant that it is a low ideal, it is all the 
more shameful if we fall below it. And a great 
many teachers fall below it, and enormously dimin- 
ish their usefulness in consequence. What, then, 
is the Epicurean ideal for the teacher ? Plenty of 
good wholesome food, eaten leisurely in good com- 
pany and pleasant surroundings. No hurried break- 
fasts of coffee and doughnuts ; no snatched lunches 
or dinners. A comfortable room where you can be 
quiet by yourself and not have to talk when you 
do not want to. Now, in the old days of boarding 
the teacher around, these things, perhaps, were not 
possible. But, in the long run, these fundamentals 
of a pleasant room and a good boarding-place are 
half the battle ; and before accepting a position a 
teacher should make sure that these fundamental 
requisites can be had. Don't save money by deny- 
ing yourselves these necessities when they can be 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 253 

had ; and don't stay long in any place where they 
cannot be had. No one can permanently be a good 
teacher without a background of restful quiet, and 
a basis of wholesome food. Next comes exercise in 
the open air. How many hours of every day do you 
spend outdoors, free from care, enjoying the sun- 
light, the fresh air, the fields, the flowers, the birds, 
the hills, the streams ? To be sure, there are voca- 
tions which do not permit this. But the teacher, 
shut up in close air under high nervous tension 
for five or six hours, can and must offset all this 
abnormality by at least an hour or two of every 
school day, and more on Saturday and Sunday, 
under the open sky, as care-free and light-hearted 
as the birds that sing in the tree-tops. Are you 
living up to your Epicurean duties in this respect? 
Of course you have games you are fond of play- 
ing. A teacher who works at such exhausting and 
narrowing work as instructing thirty or forty rest- 
less children, and does not counteract it by plenty 
of play, is not only committing slow suicide, but he 
is stunting and dwarfing his nature so that every 
year will find him personally less fit to teach than 
he was the year before. With walking, riding the 
bicycle, diiving, golf, tennis, croquet, skating, cards, 
checkers, billiards, rowing, sailing, hunting, fishing, 
and the endless variety of games and sports avail- 
able, a teacher who does not do a lot of them in 
vacations, and a good deal of them on half -holidays, 



254 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

and some of them almost every day, is falling far 
below the Epicurean standard of what a teacher 
ought to do and be. Play and people to play with 
are as necessary for a teacher as prayer for a 
preacher, or votes for a politician, a piano for a 
musician, or a hammer for a carpenter. You simply 
cannot go on healthily, happily, hopefully, without 
it. If I should learn of any candidate for a posi- 
tion as professor in Bowdoin College that he did 
and enjoyed none of these things, though he should 
be backed by the highest recommendations the 
leading universities of America and Europe could 
bestow, I would not so much as read the letters that 
he brought. For, however great he might be as a 
scholar, I should know in advance that he would be 
a failure in the teaching of American youth. There 
are probably just enough exceptions to this rule to 
prove its truth. But even those exceptions, so far 
as I can think of them, are due to invalidism, for 
which the individuals at present are not responsi- 
ble. Are you playing as much as Epicurus would 
tell you that you ought to play ? 

Do you sleep soundly, as long as nature requires, 
never letting the regrets of the day past nor the 
anxieties of the day to come encroach upon these 
precious hours, any more than you would that 
greatest of abominations — the alarm clock? Do 
you lie down every night in absolute restfulness, 
and thankfulness, and tranquillity ? Do you live 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 255 

in care-proof, worry-tight compartments, so that 
the little annoyances of one section of your life are 
never allowed to spill over and spoil the other sec- 
tions of your lives ? In short, to quote one who is 
our most genial modern apostle of Epicureanism, 
do you recognize and arrange your life according 
to the principle that 

" The world is so full of a number of things, 
That I 'm sure we should all be as happy as kings " ? 

Have you friends with whom you spend delight- 
ful hours in unrestrained companionship? Have 
you books which you read for the pure fun of it ? 
Do you go to concerts and entertainments and plays 
as often as you can afford the time and money? 
Take it altogether, are you having a good time, or, 
if not, are you resorting to every available means 
of getting one? Then, not otherwise, will you pass 
this first examination as to your personal fitness to 
be a teacher. None of us are perfect on this point. 
None of us are having nearly so good a time as we 
might. But we ought to fall somewhere above 
seventy or eighty on a scale of a hundred on this 
fundamental question. Let us hereafter mark our- 
selves as rigidly on this subject as we do our schol- 
ars in arithmetic and geography. They are mark- 
ing us all the time on this very point ; only they 
do not call it Epicureanism, or record the result in 
figures. They register it in slangy terms of their 
own likes and dislikes. 



256 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

Second. Be a Stoic, which means keep your 
mind free from all worry, anxiety, and grief. You 
say, " That is impossible. The world is full of evils 
and we can't help worrying about them and being 
depressed by them." "Yes, you can," the Stoic 
tells us ; for things out there in the external world 
never trouble us. It is only when they get into our 
minds that they hurt ; and whether they shall be 
let into our minds depends entirely on ourselves. 
You make a mistake on Monday morning. That is 
an external fact to be acknowledged and corrected 
as promptly as possible. If it makes you nervous 
aU Monday afternoon, and takes away your appe- 
tite Monday evening, and keeps you awake Mon- 
day night, and starts you out on Tuesday morning 
enfeebled, distrustful, and consequently ten times as 
likely to make mistakes as you were the day before, 
that is entirely your ovm affair and, if it happens, 
your own fault. You have allowed that external fact 
that ought to have been left in the outside world, 
where it belongs, to come in and take possession of 
your mind and drive out your normal mental, emo- 
tional, and physiological processes. 

Stoicism is fundamentally the doctrine of apper- 
ception applied to our emotional states. Stoicism 
says that our mental states are what we are, that 
no external thing can determine our mental state 
until we have woven it into the structure of our 
thought and painted it with the color of our domi- 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 257 

nant mood and temper. Thus, every mental state 
is for the most part of our own making. Of course 
this Stoic doctrine is somewhat akin to the doc- 
trine of Christian Science. Yet there is a decided 
difference. Christian Science and kindred popu- 
lar cults deny the external physical fact altogether. 
Stoicism admits the reality and then makes the 
best of it. For instance, the Christian Scientist 
with the toothache says there is no matter there 
to ache. The Stoic, both truer to the facts and 
braver in spirit, says there is matter, but it doesn't 
matter if there is. Stoicism teaches us that the 
mental states are the man ; that external things 
never, in themselves, constitute a mental state ; 
that the all-important contribution is made by the 
mind itself ; that this contribution from the mind 
is what gives the tone and determines the worth 
of the total mental state, and that this contribu- 
tion is exclusively our own affair and may be 
brought entirely under our own control. As Epic- 
tetus says, "Everything has two handles, — one by 
which it may be borne, another by which it cannot. 
If your brother acts unjustly do not lay hold of the 
affair by the handle of his injustice, for by that 
it cannot be borne ; but rather by the opposite, — 
that he is your brother ; that he was brought up 
with you ; and thus you will lay hold on it as it is 
to be borne." Again, he says men are disappointed 
" not by things, but by the view which they take 



258 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

of things. When, therefore, we are hindered, or 
disappointed, or grieved, let us never impute it to 
others, but to ourselves, that is, to our views." AU 
this, you see, is the fundamental principle that 
the only things that enter into us and affect our 
states of thought, and will, and feeling are things 
as we think about them, forces as we act upon 
them ; and these thoughts, feelings, and reactions 
are our own affairs, and, consequently, if they are 
not serene, tranquil, and happy, the fault is in our- 
selves. 

Now, we can all reduce enormously our troubles 
and vexations by bringing to bear upon them this 
Stoic formula. There is a way of looking at our 
poverty, our plainness of feature, our lack of mental 
brilliance, our unpopularity, our mistakes, our phys- 
ical ailments, that will make us modest, contented, 
cheerful, and serene. The blunders we make, the 
foolish things we do, the hasty words we say, though 
they, in a sense, have gone out from us, yet once 
committed in the external world they should be left 
there ; they should not be brought back into the 
mind to be brooded over and become centres of 
depression and discouragement. Stoicism teaches 
us to shift the emphasis from dead external facts 
beyond our control to the live option which always 
presents itself within. It tells us that the circum- 
stance or failure that can make us miserable does 
not exist unless it exists by our consent within our 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 259 

own minds. To consider not what happens to us 
but how we take it ; to measure good in terms not 
of sensuous pleasure but of mental attitude ; to 
know that if we are for the universal law of right, 
it matters not how many things may be against us ; 
to rest assured that there can be no circumstance 
or condition in which this great law cannot be done 
by us and, therefore, no situation of which we can- 
not be more than masters through obedience to the 
great law that governs all, — this is the stern and 
lofty law of Stoicism. 

Carried too far, Stoicism becomes hard, cold, 
proud, and, like its popular cults of to-day, gro- 
tesque. But there is a healing virtue in its stern 
formula after all ; and when things do not go as we 
should like, when people maltreat us and find fault 
with us, when we meet our own limitations and 
shortcomings, it is good for us to know that these 
external facts have no more power to worry us and 
depress us and unfit us for our work than we choose 
to let them have. 

A teacher's life is probably more full of con- 
scious failure, of personal collision, severe criticism, 
and general discouragement than almost any pro- 
fession. The ends at which the teacher aims are 
vast and indefinite, the material is perverse and 
recalcitrant, the resources available are often 
meagre, and the outcome is always far below what 
one would wish. But the Stoic formula, faithfully 



260 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

applied, will help us frankly to recognize these facts 
and at the same time to overcome them. We shall 
save ourselves many a troubled day and sleepless 
night if we learn to bring this Stoic formula to bear 
whenever these evils incidental to our arduous pro- 
fession press too heavily upon us. 

The third of the world's great devices for the 
development of personality is Platonism. The Epi- 
curean tells us to take in all the pleasure we can 
get. The Stoic shows us how to keep out grief and 
pain. But it is a constant strife and struggle in 
either case. The Platonist bids us rise above it all. 
" The world," says the Platonist, '' is very imper- 
fect, almost as bad as the Stoic makes it out." We 
must live in this imperfect world after a fashion 
and make the best of it while it lasts. This, how- 
ever, he tells us, is not the real world. Individual 
people and particular things are but imperfect, 
faulty, distorted copies of the true pattern of the 
good which is laid up in heaven. We must buy and 
sell, work and play, eat and drink, laugh and cry, 
love and hate down here among the earthly shades ; 
but our real conversation all the time may be in 
heaven with the perfectly good and true and beau- 
tiful. This doctrine, you see, is very closely akin 
to much of the popular philosophy which is gaining 
so many adherents in our day. A little of it is 
a good thing, but to feed on it exclusively or re- 
gard it as the final gospel is very dangerous. These 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 261 

Platonists go through the world with a serene smile 
and an air of other-worldliness we cannot but ad- 
mire ; they are seen to most advantage, however, 
from a little distance. They are not the most agree- 
able to live with ; it is a great misfortune to be tied 
to one of them as husband or wife, college or busi- 
ness partner. Louisa Alcott had this type in mind 
when she defined a philosopher as a man up in a 
balloon with his family and friends having hold of 
the rope trying to pull him down to earth. Pretty 
much all of the philosophy of Christian Science, 
and a great deal that passes for Christian religion, 
is simply Platonism masquerading in disguise. All 
such hymns as " Sweet Bye and Bye," " O Para- 
dise, O Paradise," and the like are simply Platonic. 
Thomas a Kempis gives us Platonism in the form 
of mediaeval Christian mysticism. Emerson has a 
large element of Platonism in all his deeper pas- 
sages. In all its forms you get the same dualism 
of finite and infinite, perfect and imperfect ; un- 
worthy, crumbling earth-mask to be gotten rid of 
here on earth, and the stars to be sought out and 
gazed at up in heaven. 

It is easy to ridicule and caricature this type of 
personality. Yet the world would be much the 
poorer if the Platonists and the mystics were with- 
drawn. The man or woman who at some time or 
other does not feel the spell or charm of this mood 
will miss one of the nobler experiences of life. 



262 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

In spite of this warning against Platonism ac- 
cepted as a finished gospel, it contains truth which 
every teacher ought to know and on occasion to 
apply. When one is walking through the forest 
and knows not which way to go, it is a gain some- 
times to climb a tree and take a look over the 
tops of the surrounding trees. The climbing does 
not directly help you on your journey, and, of 
course, if you stay in the tree-top you will never 
reach your destination ; but it does give you your 
bearings and insures that the next stage of your 
journey will be in the right direction. Now the 
teacher lives in a wilderness of dreary and monoto- 
nous details which shut out the larger horizon as 
completely as the trees of the forest. Every teacher 
ought, now and then, to climb the tall tree, or to 
leave the figure, to go away by himseK and look 
at his fife as a whole. A traveler in a Southern 
forest found an aged negro sitting with his banjo 
under a tree ten miles from the nearest settlement. 
In his surprise, he asked the negro what he was 
doing off there so far in the wilderness alone, and 
he replied, " I 'm just serenading my own soul." 
Platonism teaches us to get out of the bustle and 
tangle of life once in a while and serenade our 
own souls. We need, at times, to look at ourselves 
in the large, to make clear to ourselves the great 
purpose for which we are living, and the ideal of 
character toward which we aspire. We need to 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 263 

commune with the better self that we hope to be 
and take our bearings anew for the immediate jour- 
ney before us. Most people get this Platonic refuge 
in religion ; some get it in music, some in art, some 
in intimate personal friendships. In some way or 
other every teacher should have some sphere of life 
apart from the daily routine in which he can dwell 
undisturbed and find everything serene, perfect, and 
complete. When one comes down, as come down 
one must, from these mounts of transfiguration, or, 
to use Plato's figure, " when one returns from the 
sunlight back into the cave," when one takes up 
again the duty and drudgery of life, though at first 
it will seem more impossible and irksome than ever, 
yet in the long run he will find a cheerfulness and 
serenity in the doing of these hard, homely duties 
which he never could have gained unless for these 
brief periods he had gone up into the summits where 
he sees the world as a whole bathed in unclouded 
sunshine. A teacher will hardly be able to keep his 
poise, his temper, and his cheerful outlook upon life 
without the aid in some form or other of these Pla- 
tonic resources. Yet I must conclude this word 
about Plato as I began with a warning. It must be 
taken in moderate doses, and every added outlook 
and emotion derived from Platonic sources must be 
followed immediately by prompt and vigorous atten- 
tion to the duties that await us at the foot of the 
mount. The mere Platonist who is that and nothing 



264 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

more, whether he call himself mystic, monastic, 
Catholic, Evangelical, Protestant, Theosophist, or 
Christian Scientist, must remember that, though 
he draw his inspiration from above the clouds, the 
real tests of life are found on the solid earth be- 
neath his feet. The Platonist of all these types 
should take to heart the lesson conveyed in Steven- 
son's " Our Lady of the Snows." 

And ye, O brethren, what if God, 
When from heav'n^s top he spies abroad, 
And sees on this tormented stage 
The noble war of mankind rage, 
What if His vivifying eye, 
O monks, should pass your corner by ? 
For still the Lord is Lord of might. 
In deeds, in deeds he takes delight ; 
The plough, the spear, the laden barks, 
The field, the founded city, marks ; 
He marks the smiler of the streets. 
The singer upon garden seats ; 
He sees the climber in the rocks ; 
To Him, the shepherd folds his flocks. 

For those He loves that underprop 
With daily virtues heaven's top, 
And bear the falling sky with ease, 
Unfrowning caryatides, 
Those He approves that ply the trade. 
That rock the child, that wed the maid, 
That with weak virtues, weaker hands, 
Sow gladness on the peopled lands, 
And still with laughter, song and shout. 
Spin the great wheel of the earth about. 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 265 

But ye ? O ye who linger still 
Here in your fortress on the hill, 
With placid face, with tranquil breath, 
The unsought volunteers of death, 
Our cheerful General on high 
With careless looks may pass you by. 

The fourth great lesson of personality was taught 
the world by Aristotle. According to Aristotle, man 
is to find his end, not in heaven in the hereafter, but 
here and now upon the earth. The end is not some- 
thing to be gained by indulgence of appetite with 
the Epicurean, by superiority to passion with the 
Stoic, by solitary elevation of soul with the Platon- 
ist ; the end is to be wrought out of the very stuff 
of which the hard world around us is made. From 
the Aristotelian point of view nothing is good in it- 
self ; nothing is bad in itself. The goodness of good 
things depends upon the good use to which we put 
them, and the badness of bad things depends like- 
wise on the bad use to which we put them. 

From this point of view personality depends on 
the sense of proportion. This sense of proportion 
is the most essential part of a teacher's equipment. 
Every teacher has opportunity to do twenty times 
as much as he is able to do well. The important 
thing is to know which twentieth to do and which 
nineteen twentieths to leave undone. Between 
mastery of subjects taught, general reading, profes- 
sional study, exercise, recreation, social engagements, 



266 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

personal work with individual scholars, private af- 
fairs, correspondence, the regular work of the class- 
room, the correcting of papers, preparation of par- 
ticular lessons, church, clubs, there is obviously far 
more draft on the teacher's time and strength than 
can be met with safety. Teaching is an extra-haz- 
ardous profession, so far at any rate as the nervous 
system is concerned. Into each of several of these 
lines one might put his whole energy and still leave 
much to be accomplished. The teacher's problem, 
then, is one of proportion and selection, to know 
what to slight and what to emphasize. The elements 
that enter into the problem are different in each 
person. Consequently, no general rules can be laid 
down. The teacher should have a pretty clear idea 
of what he means to do and be. That which is es- 
sential to this main end should be accepted at all 
costs ; that which hinders it should be rejected at 
all costs. When the choice is between things which 
help it more and help it less, those which help it 
more should be taken and those which help it less 
should be rejected. The teacher should learn to say 
" No ! " to calls which are good in themselves, but 
are not good for him. For instance, amateur the- 
atricals are good in themselves, but no teacher who 
is teaching five or six hours a day can afford to give 
three or four evenings a week to lengthy rehearsals. 
Church fairs are good in themselves, but the wise 
teacher wiU leave the management of such things to 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 267 

persons who have much more leisure. Church atten- 
dance on Sunday is a good thing in itself, but one 
service a day is as much as the average teacher 
can attend who would do his best the five working 
days of the week. Sunday-school teaching is an 
excellent thing in itself; but as a rule it is the one 
thing above all others from which the conscientious 
public-school teacher will most rigidly refrain. For 
Sunday-school teaching puts the teacher on what 
should be the chief day of rest into precisely the 
same state of nervous tension that must be main- 
tained during the greater part of the week. Sunday- 
school teaching for a public-school teacher is very 
much the same misuse of Sunday that taking in a 
big Sunday washing would be for a washerwoman 
who had washings to do on all the other six days 
of the week. Making out absolutely accurate rank 
and reading carefully all the written work of a 
large class of pupils is a good thing in itself; but 
wise superintendents will save their teachers as 
much of that work as possible, and teachers them- 
selves will understand that if anything is to be 
shirked this is the best place to economize nervous 
force. Of course, if it is done at all, it must be done 
honestly. But the difference between rapid glancing 
and quick final judgment in such matters, and min- 
ute perusing and prolonged deliberation in each case 
is of little advantage to the pupils in the long run, 
and is often bought at excessive cost of vitality and 



268 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

strength of the teacher. Emphasize essentials, slight 
non-essentials. Do the thing that counts. Leave 
things that do not count undone or get them done 
quickly. Remember that physical health, mental 
elasticity, and freshness and vivacity of spirits must 
be maintained at all costs in the interests of the 
school and the scholars no less than as a matter of 
imperative self-preservation. The wise teacher will 
say to himself, " I must know the lessons I teach." 
"I must do some reading outside." "I must take 
an interest in my individual scholars." " I must 
keep myself strong and happy and well." " These 
are essential, and for the sake of these things I 
stand ready to sacrifice all mere red tape." "I stand 
ready to be misunderstood by good people who know 
nothing of the strain I am under." " I stand ready 
even to shrink and to slight minor matters when it 
is necessary to do so in order to do the main things 
well." In the great name of Aristotle, then, resolve 
to observe and apply this fundamental sense of pro- 
portion. Be sure that what you do is right for you, 
under the circumstances in which you are placed, 
with the definite obligations that are laid upon you. 
Never mind if you do not do everything that other 
people expect you to do ; if you do not do things 
which, though good in themselves and right for 
other people to do, in your specific situation for you 
would be wrong. In other words, have your own 
individual ends perfectly clear, and accept or reject 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 269 

the various calls that come to you according as they 
further or hinder these clearly grasped individual 
aims. 

Now, we have four bits of advice from four of 
the world's greatest teachers. There remains the 
counsel of the greatest teacher of all. Christ says 
to the teacher, " Make the interests and aims of 
each one of your scholars your own." Whether a 
teacher is a Christian in the profoundest sense of 
the term depends not in the least on whether he is 
a Catholic or a Protestant, a Conservative or a 
Liberal. It depends on whether the teacher has 
his own point of view, his personal interests, and 
then regards the scholars as alien beings to be dealt 
with as the rules of the school may require and as 
his own personal interest and reputation may sug- 
gest ; or whether in sympathy and generous inter- 
est he makes the life and problems of each scholar 
a genuine part of the problem of his own enlarged 
nature and generous heart. The greatest differ- 
ence between teachers, after all, is that in this 
deepest sense some teachers are Christians and 
some teachers are not. The teacher who is not a 
Christian according to this definition will work 
for reputation and pay, — will teach what is re- 
quired and rule the school by sheer authority and 
force. Between teacher and scholar a great gulf 
wiU be fixed ; the only bridges across that gulf 
will be authority and constraint on the part of 



270 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

the teacher, fear and self-interest on the part of 
the pupils. Such a teacher will set tasks and com- 
pel the scholars to do them. Here such a teacher's 
responsibility will end. 

Precisely here, where the unchristian teacher's 
work ends, is where the Christian teacher's best 
work begins. Instead of imposing a task on the 
scholars, the Christian teacher sets before scholars 
and teacher alike a task which they together must 
do ; the teacher is to help each scholar to do it and 
each scholar is to help the teacher to get this 
task done. It is a common work in which they are 
engaged. If they succeed it is a common satisfac- 
tion ; if any individual fails it is a common sor- 
row. The Christian teacher will be just as rigid in 
his requirements as the unchristian teacher, but the 
attitude toward the doing of it is entirely differ- 
ent. The unchristian teacher says to the scholars, 
" Go and do that work : I shall mark you and pun- 
ish you if you fail." The Christian teacher says, 
" Come, let us do this work together ; I am ready 
to help you in every way I can, and I want each 
of you to help me." The Christian teacher looks 
forward to each pupil's future, and enters sympa- 
thetically into the plans which the child has for him- 
self and his parents have for him. 

Now undoubtedly this Christian attitude toward 
each scholar is pretty expensive of the teacher's 
time and strength. Doubtless, hitherto you have 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 271 

thought me very selfish, hard-hearted, and parsi- 
monious in the counsel I have been giving. I have 
told you in the name of Epicurus to get all the 
pleasure you can; in the name of the Stoics to 
shut out all superfluous griefs and worry; in the 
name of Plato to get above petty details and live a 
life of your own, apart from mere humdrum rou- 
tine ; in the name of Aristotle to develop a sense 
of proportion, to shirk and slight and exclude a 
thousand distractions that are well enough for other 
people, but which you cannot afford. But in giv- 
ing all this selfish, hard-hearted, coolly calculated 
advice, I have asked you to save yourselves for 
this Christian work, which is the best worth while 
of all. Pour yourselves unreservedly, without stint 
or measure, into the lives of your scholars. See 
things through their eyes; feel keenly their joys 
and griefs. Be sure that you share in sympathy 
and helpfulness every task you lay upon them ; 
that you rejoice in every success they achieve, and 
that you are even more sorry than they for every 
failure they make. Be a leader, not a driver, of 
your flock : for to lead is Christ-like, to drive is 
unchristian. The difference, you see, between the 
teacher who is a Christian and the one who is not, 
is not a difference of doctrine or ritual or verbal 
profession. It is a difference in the tone, temper, 
and spirit of the teacher's attitude toward the 
scholars. It is a hard thing to define, but it is 



272 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

somethmg an experienced person can feel before 
lie has been in a class-room five minutes. In one 
class-room you feel the tension of alien and an- 
tagonistic forces, the will of the teacher arrayed 
against the will of the scholars, and, as an inevi- 
table consequence, the will of the scholars in latent 
antagonism to the will of the teacher. In another 
class-room there is tension, to be sure, as there 
ought to be, but it is the tension of one strong, 
friendly, united will of teacher and scholar directed 
against their great common tasks. The Christian 
spirit alone, without sufficient mental equipment 
and force of will, will not teach school any more 
than it wiU manage a factory or win a game of 
football without technical training and equipment. 
All this, however, I am taking for granted. As- 
suming these general qualifications, it may be safely 
said that every teacher who combines the five 
qualities we have been describing will find teach- 
ing a perpetual joy and will achieve a brilliant 
success. 

Such are the five points of personality as the 
world's great teachers have developed them and as 
they apply specifically to the work of the teacher. 
Show me any teacher of sufficient mental training 
and qualifications who is unpopular, ineffective, un- 
happy, and I will guarantee that this teacher has vio- 
lated one or more of these five principles of person- 
ality ; either he has neglected diet, exercise, rest, and 



THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 273 

recreation, and failed to have a good time ; or else lie 
has wasted his nervous substance in riotous worry, 
and spent the energy needed to make things go 
right to-day in regretting what went wrong yesterday 
or anticipating what may go wrong to-morrow ; or 
else he has no life of his own outside of the school 
and above it, from which he comes down clothed 
with fresh inspiration and courage to meet the duties 
and details of each new school day ; or else he has 
missed the great sense of proportion and squandered 
the energies which should have been devoted to the 
few things that are needful on a variety of burdens 
which the importunity of others or the false con- 
scientiousness of himself had laid upon him ; or else, 
and this is by far the most common and serious 
cause, he has failed to merge his own life in the 
lives of the scholars, so that they have felt him a 
helper, a leader, a friend in the solving of their in- 
dividual problems and the accomplishment of their 
common work. 

On the other hand, I will guarantee perfect per- 
sonal success to any well-trained teacher who will 
faithfully incorporate these five principles into his 
personal life. The teacher who is healthy and happy 
with Epicurus nights and mornings, holidays and va- 
cations, at mealtime and between meals ; who faith- 
fully fortifies his soul with the Stoic defenses against 
needless regrets and superfluous forebodings ; who 
now and then ascends with Plato the heights from 



274 THE PERSONALITY OF THE TEACHER 

which he sees the letters of his life writ large, and 
petty annoyances reduced to their true dimen- 
sions ; who applies the Aristotelian sense of propor- 
tion to the distribution of his energy, so that the 
full force of it is held in reserve for the things that 
are really worth while, and finally sees in the lives 
of his scholars the supreme object for which all 
these other accumulations and savings have been 
made, and devotes himself joyfully and unreservedly 
to the common work he tries to do with them, for 
them, and through them for their lastiug good, — 
this teacher can no more help being a personal 
success as a teacher than the sunlight and rain can 
help making the earth the fruitful aud beautiful 
place that it is. 



XIV 

The Six Partners in College Administra- 
tion 

THE last decade of the nineteenth century raised 
the question of academic freedom in several 
cases: at Brown University, Chicago University, 
Kansas State Agricultural College, and Leland 
Stanford Junior University. It is not my purpose 
to discuss any of these cases. For every college 
president knows that there are many things on the 
inside of such questions which cannot be made to 
appear to the public as they really are. What one 
of us has not, time and again, been compelled to 
hold his peace while the public was making all sorts 
of unjust criticisms, simply because telling the whole 
truth would do more harm to the institution and to 
other persons than the criticism could do to us ! 

This question of academic freedom did not arise 
so long as the colleges were content to teach Latin, 
Greek, mathematics, and a little science and phi- 
losophy, for the simple reason that nobody cared 
much, one way or the other, what was taught about 
these things. Most of these subjects were so formal 
and dead that serious difference of opinion about 
them was impossible. No one cared to interfere 



276 THE SIX PARTNERS 

with the liberty of a professor to translate a pas- 
sage of Virgil, to solve an equation, or to demon- 
strate a proposition in any way he might please. 
Interference with liberty comes only when the sub- 
jects taught are those for which the people care. 
When people felt that theological questions were 
most vital to their welfare, they hedged about their 
theological seminaries with creeds, and bound pro- 
fessors to teach according to the letter of the 
creed. In times of intense political activity, as in 
the Revolution and the Civil War, political opin- 
ions were the battle-ground of academic freedom. 
Now that economic and social questions have come 
to the front, it is with these that troubles have 
arisen. It is no accident that all four cases cited 
above arose in connection with utterances on eco- 
nomic and social questions. Theological persecutions 
we have inherited in connection with creeds, fast 
growing incredible, to which chairs of instruction 
are tied. The troubles at Union and Andover came 
from this source ; and soon or late every seminary 
that is tied to a creed will have to face that kind 
of trouble. If there is less persecution of heretics 
to-day than formerly, we have reason to fear that 
indifference to the issues is the cause. Political per- 
secution we have spasmodically in political cam- 
paigns ; but the storm of protest which such perse- 
cution raises is so intense that the persecutors suffer 
more damage than the persecuted. 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 277 

Social and economic questions, however, are des- 
tined to divide the public more sharply than ever 
before. Unless we can come to a clear understand- 
ing as to the mutual duties and rights of the sev- 
eral partners in college administration, professor- 
ships of economics and sociology will be as perilous 
positions in a democracy as chairs of politics ever 
were under an absolute monarchy, or chairs of the- 
ology in the palmy days of papal power. 

Who, then, are the partners in college administra- 
tion ? The parties to this partnership are six. First, 
the founders, donors, and benefactors. Second, the 
State. Third, the trustees, regents, or overseers. 
Fourth, professors and instructors. Fifth, the stu- 
dents. Sixth, the constituency of the college, that 
portion of the public from which money and stu- 
dents come, and to whom the institution must look 
for interest, guidance, and support. The most im- 
portant element in this portion of the public, which 
I have called the constituency of the institution, is 
the institution's own alumni. 

To assign to each of these six parties to col- 
college administration their respective rights and 
duties, is the problem which we must try to solve. 
First, the rights and duties of founders, donors, and 
benefactors, the men from whom the money comes. 
The founder has a right to determine the general 
purpose and scope of the institution which he 
founds, subject to the approval and acceptance of 



278 THE SIX PARTNERS 

the State. He has the right to select the first trus- 
tees, and to outline in a general way the policy 
and procedure the new institution shall adopt. 
Subsequent donors and benefactors have the obvi- 
ous right to satisfy themselves as to the efficiency 
of the trustees, and the wisdom of the policy of the 
institution to which they give their money. They 
also have the right to determine to what particular 
departments, within the general scope of the insti- 
tution, their special benefactions shall be devoted. 
This is the limit of the donor's right. He may give 
or he may not give, but when he has given his 
money, it should be as completely beyond his indi- 
vidual control as is a thrown stone after it has left 
the hand. A donor has no more right to dictate what 
views an institution shall teach than a stockholder 
of a steamship company has a right to direct the 
pilot how he shall steer the ship to which a thou- 
sand lives have been intrusted. The moment a 
donor has given his money, he has entered into a 
partnership with the five other parties to an insti- 
tution, and his rights must be limited by the rights 
which belong to them. Neither may he legitimately 
draw up a creed or statement of opinion which the 
professors in the institution shall be bound to teach. 
To do that would be like sending a boat to sea with 
the tiUer lashed in position, and with instructions 
to the sailors on no account to touch it, even though 
the boat might be making straight for the icebergs 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 279 

or the rocks. The attempt of a donor to dictate the 
views which a professor shall teach is to arrogate 
to himseK the attributes of omniscience, omnipo- 
tence, and immortality, — an arrogance of which no 
mortal man would care to be guilty. This limitation 
of a donor's rights may seem severe and extreme, 
yet it is the foundation stone on which academic 
freedom rests. 

A donor may indicate the general purpose to 
which his gift shall be devoted. He has no right 
to dictate the specific views which shall be incul- 
cated under that general purpose. Wherever found- 
ers, donors, or charters have ventured to prophesy, 
evil has resulted. Wise as was Johns Hopkins, and 
great as was his gift, how much wiser he would 
have been, and how much more useful woidd have 
been his gift, had he not tied his institution to the 
uncertain fortunes of the Baltimore and Ohio Rail- 
road ! Much as Clark University under its able 
president has been able to accomplish, it would 
have done five times as much if the founder had 
merely given his gift in cash, and turned over all 
questions of building, equipment, personnel, and 
curriculum to the president and the very compe- 
tent board of trustees whom he selected. Other 
institutions have failed to get financial support be- 
cause the founders have been supposed to carry 
the keys of the safe in their pockets. 

Financial interference, however, is the least seri- 



280 THE SIX PARTNERS 

ous of the errors of founders and benefactors. For, 
as a rule, finance is the one thing in which such 
founders are experts. Their interference becomes 
intolerable and fatal the moment they attempt to 
dictate the specific opinions which shall or shall 
not be taught. It were better that a million dollars 
should be sunk in Boston Harbor, Lake Michi- 
gan, or San Francisco Bay, than that the donor 
of it should influence, in the slightest degree, the 
utterance of a professor at Cambridge, Chicago, or 
Berkeley. For an institution of learning is a part- 
nership, and the determination of precisely what 
shall or shall not be taught rests chiefly with the 
other partners. 

The second of the six partners in the college 
is the State. The contribution of the State con- 
sists in exemption from taxation, which increases 
by one third the value of productive funds, and 
the degree-conferring power, which gives to the 
graduates of the college ofiicial recognition and 
standing in the community. It is the duty of the 
State to protect the public against misdirection of 
funds and the cheapening of degrees. An institu- 
tion founded for the propagation of alchemy, as- 
trology, palmistry, theosophy, or Christian science 
would have no claim to exemption from taxation 
or the conf-erring of degrees. For some of these 
subjects have been proved to be wdthout founda- 
tion ; and others, to say the least, have yet to make 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 281 

good their claim to public confidence. There is no 
reason why the public at large should contribute to 
the support of such institutions, or place confidence 
in their graduates. Consequently a charter grant- 
ing exemption from taxation and the degree-con- 
ferring power to institutions of this kind would 
be a partnership of the State in purely private 
interests. Furthermore, the State should refuse 
charters to institutions which propose to duplicate 
means of instruction which are already adequate. 
The State should not support ten colleges when 
five are adequate to serve its educational needs. 
Again, charters should be refused to institutions 
which fail to give promise of adequate means for 
the prosecution of the work they undertake. Some 
indulgence doubtless is necessary to struggling in- 
stitutions in new communities. On the frontier, an 
institution may be founded on a lot of land given 
to it as a means of booming the town, the build- 
ings may be built by mortgaging the land, the pro- 
fessors may be employed with money raised by a 
mortgage on the buildings, and finally the money 
to prevent foreclosure may be raised from credu- 
lous donors in the East. I once visited such a col- 
lege and inquired of the janitor, who was a student 
in the institution, as to the financial basis and 
prospects of the institution. He told me that it 
had no president, only four professors, and thirty- 
two students. When more closely questioned, he 



282 THE SIX PARTNERS 

confessed that of those thirty-two students, thirty- 
were in the preparatory department. I asked him 
if there were any other competing institutions, and 
he replied that there was a State university in the 
city, and that a Presbyterian college was in pro- 
cess of erection. When asked as to the financial 
support of the institution, he replied that it had 
the entire denomination of the State behind it. I 
asked him how strong the denomination was in 
that State, and he replied that there were nine 
churches in the State, of which two were self- 
supporting. In new communities it may be neces- 
sary to encourage such infant industries by grant- 
ing charters with great freedom, trusting to natural 
selection to weed out, in due time, the feebler 
ones ; but in established communities it is the 
duty of the State to assure itself that a proposed 
institution will have sufficient means to give the 
instruction which it offers by approved methods 
and under competent instructors. Where strong 
institutions are so numerous and easily available 
as they are in most of our Eastern States, it is 
a great wrong to the community to encourage the 
establishment of educational weaklings, which give 
an inferior education to the deluded students who 
resort to them, and which eke out a precarious 
existence by systematic begging. It is the duty of 
prospective donors and benefactors to discriminate 
against these feeble and struggling institutions. 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 283 

The wise donor will see that the dollar which he 
gives is multiplied by every dollar that the institu- 
tion to which it is given already has. To give to 
an institution which has only one or two hundred 
thousand dollars of endowment is to make his 
gift of much less educational value than if it were 
given to an institution which had several millions. 
" To him that hath shall be given " is a law which 
wise friends of education should strictly observe in 
their gifts. 

The State should refuse to grant charters for the 
promulgation of individual opinions and prejudices. 
It should not allow an institution to bind itself 
to teach either free trade or protection, either the 
gold standard or the free and unlimited coinage of 
silver at the ratio of sixteen to one, either imperi- 
alism or anti-imperialism, either private or munici- 
pal ownership of public-service corporations, either 
Trinitarianism or Unitarianism, either universal 
salvation or the endless punishment of the wicked, 
either free will or determinism, either socialism or 
individualism, either sacerdotalism or the inde- 
pendence of the local church. These are matters 
in which competent persons disagree. One side of 
these questions has as much right to be impartially 
presented as the other. The public, as such, has 
no peculiar and exclusive interest in either one ; 
consequently the State should not enter into part- 
nership with either party to these and kindred con- 



284 THE SIX PARTNERS 

troversies. There is, however, a way in which the 
views of private parties may legitimately be taught 
under the protection and sanction of the State. 
As has already been said, the founders and donors 
have a right to select the trustees who are to exe- 
cute their trust. The State need not inquire into 
the views of the donors or of the trustees whom 
they select. The State deals with both donors and 
trustees as citizens ; it does not inquire whether they 
are individualists or socialists, protectionists or free- 
traders, Catholic or Protestant, orthodox or liberal. 
If they are sufficiently intelligent and competent 
to administer the trust imposed upon them, the 
State asks no questions about their views. Con- 
sequently, it is perfectly possible for Catholics to 
establish a Catholic university, controlled by Cath- 
olic trustees under the sanction of the State. The 
State does not thereby become a partner in their 
peculiar views, as it w^ould if the requirement to 
teach those peculiar views were embodied in the 
charter of the institution. Furthermore, where the 
character of the institution is determined by men 
rather than by document, there is ample oppor- 
tunity for change with changing conditions. This 
method of securing the teaching of special views 
is well recognized among us. In future charters 
this should be the only method of propagating 
special opinions which is tolerated and sanctioned 
by the State. 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 285 

The third partner in an educational institution 
is the board of trustees. It is their duty to invest 
the funds and to devote the income of the institution 
to the needs for which it is established. The expert 
financier is an indispensable member of every such 
board of trustees, for the waste or misapplication 
of funds is absolutely fatal to the life and work of 
the institution. 

Next in importance to the expert jBnancier on a 
board of trustees is the man of broad educational 
ideas. This is the prime qualification of the president 
of the institution. It is a serious mistake to put 
the mere financier or the ornate figurehead or the 
man of popular gifts or the prominent ecclesiastic 
at the head of an institution. These other qualities 
are, indeed, desirable, but not essential, for a pres- 
ident. The expert financial ability may be supplied 
from the trustees ; but the trustees as a whole can 
never give the educational direction to an institu- 
tion. That should be centred in one person, and 
that person should be the president. The president 
should be at the head both of the governing board 
and the faculty of instruction. Wherever the board 
of government and instruction is not thus united in 
one head, there is sure to creep in all the ineffi- 
ciency and indirection which is represented to our 
minds by the word " lobbying." Our theological 
seminaries which have not been connected with uni- 
versities until recently have, as a rule, been organ- 



286 THE SIX PARTNERS 

ized on this basis of mutual exclusion. As a result 
their management has been far below the level of the 
efficiency and the mutual understanding and good 
will which characterize other institutions of learn- 
ing. Tied to creeds and governed by trustees who 
have known comparatively Httle of the inner work- 
ing of the institution committed to their charge, 
these theological seminaries have lagged far behind 
other institutions of learning in the efficiency and 
harmony of their administration. 

It is the duty of the trustees to elect a president 
and professors. In this election they are under 
obligation to lay aside their private interests, pre- 
judices, and predilections, and, with due regard to 
the known purposes of founders and donors, to 
select the best available men for the chairs of in- 
struction. This is one place in the world where in- 
fluence and patronage should never be permitted to 
enter. In the selection of professors, the judgment 
of the allied departments of instruction should 
have great weight. The views of the faculty as a 
whole should be consulted ; but the final authority 
should rest with the trustees, and should be exer- 
cised on the reconunendation of the president. As 
a rule, a man who is indorsed by the professors 
in the same or closely allied departments, who is 
approved by the faculty as a whole, and who is re- 
commended by the president, should be elected by 
the trustees almost as a matter of course ; for the 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 287 

president and the professors in allied departments 
are presumably experts in technical matters of edu- 
cation, while a board of trustees composed of men 
whose chief attention is given to business and pro- 
fessional life are presumably not educational ex- 
perts. At the same time, the trustees always have 
the right for good and sufficient reasons to refuse 
to elect persons so nominated. While they may re- 
ject a nominee, however, it would hardly be within 
their province to select a candidate of their own 
and force him upon the faculty over the protest of 
the president. The ultimate responsibility for the 
educational conduct of the institution rests with the 
president. He cannot expect to have everything 
which he desires done by the trustees, but he has 
a right to insist that no professor shall be imposed 
upon him against his will. The election of a pro- 
fessor or instructor whom the president did not 
approve would be equivalent to a vote of want of 
confidence in the president, and would naturally be 
followed by his resignation. In municipal affairs, 
the tendency is more and more toward the centraH- 
zation of power. This is even more desirable in the 
conduct of educational institutions. The men who 
have clear views of educational policy, who have a 
just sense of proportion between the several depart- 
ments of instruction, who are able to judge men not 
merely for their individual attainments, but for their 
capacity to fit into a complicated intellectual ma- 



288 THE SIX PARTNERS 

chine, and contribute to the whole the most which 
this particular position, under the given circum- 
stances, is able to render, are not numerous. Either 
a president is such a man, or he is not. If he is such 
a person, the wisest thing a board of trustees can 
do is to trust him implicitly. If he is not such a 
person, the sooner they get rid of him the better. 
Autocracy tempered by assassination is the ideal 
college government. By autocracy I do not mean 
arbitrariness or conceit or caprice. The educational 
autocrat should consult the reasonable claims of 
students, seek the advice of the faculty individually 
and collectively, confer with members of his board 
of trustees, get the views of experts in other in- 
stitutions as to the qualifications of his candidate. 
But when his mind is made up as a result of these 
many inquiries and varied considerations, he has 
a right to expect his judgment to carry more 
weight than that of merchants or judges or clergy- 
men, who, however eminent in those fields to which 
they have given special attention, cannot in the na- 
ture of the case have given as much consideration 
to the particular problem in hand as it is his pre- 
rogative and duty to do. The president has a right 
to have each professor in the institution one whom 
he has either accepted from his predecessor when 
he took the office, or whom he has personally ap- 
proved at the time of his election. There are great 
risks in trusting so much power to any individual. 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 289 

In the hands of an unwise man such power may 
harm an institution for a generation, but the pol- 
icy of divided counsels and appointments without 
expert approval is an even greater risk, and will 
ruin an institution forever. 

The fourth partner in a college is the faculty. 
It is the duty of a professor to be the master of his 
department. He must know his subject. Know- 
ledge is not an aggregate of isolated propositions ; 
it is not merely an amount of information. It is 
the apprehension of the whole system of relations 
which his department includes, ability to see each 
fact in the light of all the other facts to which 
it is intimately related, the power to grasp the 
whole system to which the facts belong, the capa- 
city to bring all that is known about a subject to 
bear upon any problem that may arise within the 
department of knowledge to which it belongs. A 
professor must be able to teach the whole subject 
whenever he teaches any part of it, to answer off- 
hand any ordinary question that may arise in con- 
nection with it, or at least, if he cannot answer it, 
to point the inquirer to the sources where the an- 
swer may be found, if it is answerable. The pro- 
fessor is the man through whom a department of 
knowledge lives and thinks and speaks. If the 
oracle is dumb, if he evades legitimate questions or 
gives wrong answers without promptly acknowledg- 
ing his error, he is not a real professor at all ; he 



290 THE SIX PARTNERS 

is unfit for his place, and lie should be removed at 
once. Again, if a professor knows a subject but 
cannot impart it as a living whole, so that it will 
live and grow in the minds of honest and earnest 
students, if he teaches the words of the book, or the 
mere letter of his own lectures, or the equally dead 
contents of his verbal memory, he is incompetent, 
and should be discharged. The students in our 
American institutions are very keen and competent 
critics on this point. Disorder in the class-room 
springs from this source more frequently than from 
any other. The students render a valuable service 
to education in helping to weed out these incom- 
petent professors. As Dr. G. Stanley Hall says, 
" Youthful sentiment is right. There is nothing 
more worthy of being the butt of all the horseplay 
of ephebic wit or practical joke than an instructor 
from whose soul the enthusiasm of humanity has 
vanished, who has ceased to know and grow, and 
who serves up the dry husks of former knowledge 
and peddles second and third hand information, 
warmed up from year to year, rather than opening 
new living fountains in which the burning thirst of 
youth can be slaked. The latter's instincts are far 
wiser than they know, for iconoclasm is never better 
directed than against the literalist, formalist, and 
sophronist." It must be frankly confessed that as 
a rule American students, in time past, have been 
better judges than presidents and boards of trustees 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 291 

of the fitness or unfitness of professors for their 
places, and that they have shown a courage, enter- 
prise, and efficiency in the discipline of incompetent 
professors which presidents and trustees have sadly 
lacked. Like all forms of natural selection, this 
discipline of incompetent professors by students is 
merciless ; but it is in the long run beneficent. It 
protects the colleges from a horde of morally good 
but intellectually weak, dull, dry, dead professors. 
At last the presidents themselves have discovered 
a way of solving this problem which combines effi- 
ciency with apparent tender-heartedness. They 
take advantage of the elective system to introduce 
young and inspiring instructors, offering courses 
that compete with the courses of the dead professor. 
It is expensive, involving temporary duplication of 
salaries. But in time it proves effective. The man 
who in open competition fails to draw his fair pro- 
portion of students, and that without resorting to 
" snap " courses, has the propriety of his resignation 
pointed out to him in terms which everybody else 
can read, if he cannot. And in due time the desired 
resignation is forthcoming. In the application of 
this principle, proportion, not numbers alone, has to 
be considered. For courses in advanced mathemat- 
ics or physics never can appeal to numbers as do 
elementary courses in literature, history, and econo- 
mics. It is noticed that whenever this automatic nat- 
ural selection of professors is applied through the 



292 THE SIX PARTNERS 

elective system, there is an immediate falling off, 
if not an absolute discontinuance, of the artificial 
selection by irritation and horseplay and practical 
jokes on the part of the students. 

Removal of professors for incompetence is a duty 
of trustees and presidents which they have never 
half lived up to. To shift this duty onto students 
as has been done in the past, or onto the elective 
system, as is being done at present, is cowardly 
negligence. The incompetent man should be dis- 
missed at the first opportunity. Academic freedom 
demands it. For the truth has a right to be uttered 
through a voice competent to proclaim it. Kindness 
to the incompetent is treason to the truth, a be- 
trayal of the rights of the students. Not one appli- 
cant in ten for a college professorship is fit for the 
position for which he applies. The most ominous 
sign in American education to-day is the fact that 
a certain class of institutions are filling up their 
chairs with men who have indeed met the techni- 
cal requirements of graduate study, men who are 
capped in a thesis and gowned in a doctor's degree, 
but who lack the grasp of their subject as a living, 
growing whole. 

So much for a professor's duty to his subject and 
to his students. His next duty is to his college. 
Egotism and individualism are inconsistent with 
the harmonious working of a faculty. Unless a 
man can be courteous and generous in his relations 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 293 

with his colleagues and can cooperate with them 
harmoniously and good-naturedly in common work, 
he has no place on a college faculty. This matter 
is much more important in small colleges than in 
large universities. The egotist who would make 
interminable trouble in the small circle of a country 
college may be swallowed up and utilized to good 
advantage in a university which is large enough to 
ignore the personal equation of the individual. The 
first few years of a professor's appointment should 
be regarded as strictly provisional and temporary ; 
and if incompatibility of temper develops in these 
early years, it is safe ground for refusal to renew 
the appointment. Unless a professor is prepared 
to do a good deal of unrewarded drudgery, and to 
co(3perate with others in plans of which he does not 
altogether individually approve, and to be at times 
the agent of policies to which he cannot give his 
hearty personal assent, above all if he cannot re- 
cognize that other people have as much right to 
their point of view as he has to his own, he never 
will make the most useful member of a college 
faculty. 

Finally, a professor is under obligation to respect 
the constituency of the college. Precisely what is 
meant by this constituency will be considered later. 
A professor has no right, deliberately and inten- 
tionally, to offend the friends and supporters of 
the institution which he is employed to serve. If 



294 THE SIX PARTNERS 

he IS a believer in the gold standard, he has no 
right to denounce the advocates of free silver as 
thieves and robbers. If he is a believer in free 
trade, he has no right to call protectionists robbers 
and plunderers of the poor. If he is an anti-impe- 
rialist, he has no right to call expansionists hard 
names. For the adherents to these views to which 
he is opposed have certain rights in the institution 
to which he belongs. They contribute indirectly, 
through its exemption from taxation, to its support. 
They send their children to it for education. They 
look to it and to its graduates for counsel in pro- 
fessional, and guidance in public affairs. He has 
no right to become an agitator in behalf of views 
and measures which are repugnant to considerable 
portions of the constituency of the institution, — no 
right, I say, to do these things as a professor. If 
he wishes to do them as an individual, he of course 
has a perfect right to do so. But he should first 
hand in his resignation. In a free country every 
man has a right to be a martyr to any cause which 
he believes to be worthy of his individual sacrifice. 
But no professor has the right to lay the institu- 
tion which he serves upon the altar of his own 
martyr zeal. An institution stands for the accu- 
mulated wisdom of the world. To set that wisdom 
forth in due proportion is its prime purpose. To 
sacrifice its chief function for the sake of some 
special view which an individual may desire to 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 295 

advocate, is a wrong to the institution which no 
individual has a right to inflict. 

In placing this limit on the utterance of profes- 
sors, there is involved no unreasonable restriction 
of liberty. As has been said, if a man feels called 
upon to become an agitator, he is free to leave the 
university. More than that, every professor is at 
perfect liberty to give dignified and moderate ex- 
pression to whatever views on political and social 
questions he may hold. In private conversation, 
in response to inquiry from the newspapers, even 
in a public speech, he is at liberty to set forth 
whatever views he holds and feels called upon to 
express. In doing so, however, he should never 
forget the dignity and impartiality and courtesy 
which his position as an intellectual servant of 
the public must always impose upon him. The 
question of academic freedom, at this point, is 
generally more a question of manners than of 
morals, more a matter of tone and temper and 
emphasis than of conviction. The distinction which 
Mr. Cleveland attempted to draw between a mem- 
ber of a party and an offensive partisan, is one 
which applies to this question of a professor's free- 
dom of speech. Membership in a political party 
and frank avowal of one's views on political and 
social questions are perfectly consistent with the 
position of a professor. Neither president nor trus- 
tee nor donor has the slightest right to inquire 



296 THE SIX PARTNERS 

Into a professor's views for the purposes of disci- 
pline or removal, nor to prevent the reasonable and 
moderate expression of such views. On the other 
hand, a president and a board of trustees have 
both the right and duty to suggest to a professor 
that the immoderate and aggressive and vitupera- 
tive reiteration of views which are repugnant to a 
large portion of the constituency of an institution 
are inconsistent with his largest usefulness as a 
professor, and if he persists in such utterances, to 
notify him to choose between the career of an agi- 
tator and a professor. Every relationship implies 
both rights and duties. A professor has duties to 
an institution as well as rights in it. It is the duty 
of the president and trustees of an institution to 
protect a professor in his reasonable rights, and to 
insist on his regard for the duties and obligations 
which his membership in the institution involves. 

The fifth partner in a college is the body of 
students. Academic freedom is as necessary to the 
students as to any other part in the university. In 
early college days, no provision was made for the 
free life of the students ; accordingly they created 
such a sphere for themselves. By robbing the hen- 
roosts of neighboring farmers, translating live stock 
to the roofs of college buildings and establishing 
them in the recitation rooms, by greasing black- 
boards and barricading lecture-rooms, by torment- 
ing tutors and annoying freshmen, — the students 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 297 

made for themselves an artificial world in which 
they found the freedom that the rigid curriculum 
and the paternal discipline of the college refused to 
provide for them. A few of the wiser presidents of 
those days recognized the educational and spiritual 
necessity of such a vent for youthful spirits, and 
were content to perfunctorily deplore such acts, 
without being too strenuous in punishing culprits ; 
but no one was wise or strong enough to provide 
the real freedom which alone could supersede it. 

The necessity of freedom to student life has at 
length gained official recognition. Dr. William T. 
Harris in his " Psychologic Foundations of Educa- 
tion " says : — 

" Wherever there is much pressure laid on the 
individual, there the reaction is violent, and pupils 
in a governed school must have their forms of re- 
action. In a college, where the pressure of prescrip- 
tion is far greater, the reaction produces secret 
societies, college songs, hazing, initiations, pranks 
on the citizens, etc. The study of a dead language, 
abstruse mathematics, and the discipline far re- 
moved from the ordinary life of the age, produces 
self-estrangement ; and the student preserves his 
elasticity in the meantime by forming Greek -letter 
societies wherein he caricatures his daily studies, 
mocks them with inextinguishable laughter, and 
forms for himself the consciousness of a new life, 
— a college life of his own creation. He hazes the 



298 THE SIX PARTNERS 

members of the lower classes, and initiates them 
into the artificial college life by rites well planned 
to shock the traditions of civil order," 

In more recent years, improved laboratory facili- 
ties, the increased use of the library, the introduc- 
tion of the elective system, and the advent of ath- 
letics have brought into student life a real freedom, 
and to that extent have superseded the necessity of 
that artificial freedom which, in former days, the 
students were compelled to carve out for themselves. 
No man can grow in character unless he is doing 
freely and gladly something which he likes to do, — 
something into which he can put the whole energy 
of his wiU, the whole enthusiasm of his heart. The 
modern college provides this freedom in study, in 
athletics, and in a more dignified and enjoyable 
social life of the students among themselves. The 
elective system allows and encourages the student 
to throw his whole energy into congenial intellect- 
ual tasks ; athletics afford him a sphere in which 
he can do something as weU as it can be done, and 
reap the glory of it for himseK and for his uni- 
versity; life in chapter houses and college clubs 
gives the youth a sense of proprietorship and re- 
sponsibility for the conduct of his own affairs which 
he never felt so long as he lived in dormitories 
erected by the college, and ate his meals at long 
tables in the college commons. If the disorders 
which used to mark the college dormitory life, with 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 299 

the attendant breaking in of doors and smashing 
of furniture, if the rude manners and biscuit bat- 
tles, like that at Harvard in which the historian 
Parkman so nearly lost his eyesight, have disap- 
peared, it is not because they failed to perform 
an absolutely indispensable educational function in 
the college of their day, but because a wiser educa- 
tional pohcy has provided spheres of freedom by 
which these rougher disciplines in independence have 
been superseded. We can never make men out of 
the boys who come to us unless, in some form or 
other, we give them a career in which to work out 
freely what is in them. Wherever prescription and 
paternalism undertake to domineer the life of the 
students, there we are sure to find either lawlessness, 
rebellion, and all manner of boisterous mischief, or 
else the product of such an institution will be a lot 
of good-for-nothing, effeminate, namby-pamby weak- 
lings. The only way to escape this alternative is to 
provide for the students a physical, intellectual, 
and social life which shall be not merely what the 
mature, decorous judgment of their elders declares 
it ought to be, but, first of all, what the students 
earnestly and enthusiastically and freely make for 
themselves and cherish as their own. The question 
of athletics is not the question of whether this or 
that particular form of exercise is intrinsically good 
or bad, nor how it will affect the symmetry of the 
body as expressed on the anthropometric chart ; the 



300 THE SIX PARTNERS 

question of the elective system is not the question 
whether a student will always choose a wiser course 
than a professor could mark out for him ; the ques- 
tion of chapter houses, society halls, and univer- 
sity clubs is not the question whether these things 
are more expensive or clannish than accommoda- 
tions which the college authorities could provide in 
dormitories and commons. All these questions are 
mere phases of the deeper question whether the 
college shall hold its students in a state of tu- 
telage as a benevolent empire rules its conquered 
provinces, or whether it shall give to them the 
largest liberty in the conduct of their personal af- 
fairs which is consistent with their reasonable pro- 
gress in the studies they come to the institution to 
pursue, just as a republic grants to its constituent 
States the largest measure of local seK-govemment 
that is consistent with the efficiency and dignity of 
the nation. 

The sixth and final partner in a college is its 
constituency. This is a broad term, including the 
students and the homes from which they come, the 
geographical area from which the students are 
largely drawn, the social class or denominational 
body with which the institution is most closely 
allied, and, above all, the alumni of the institu- 
tion, who bear its name, and whose affections and 
interests are bound up with its reputation and wel- 
fare. The rights of this sixth partner have already 



IN COLLEGE ADMLNISTEATION 301 

been partially indicated in setting forth the duty 
of the professor to respect them. One of the chief 
duties of the constituency is to keep the institution 
abreast of the times. The other partners incline to 
conservatism. Founders and donors die. Founda- 
tions and charters remain unchanged. The State is 
conservative alike by instinct and necessity. Trus- 
tees grow old, become absorbed in other interests, 
and unconsciously think of an institution's needs 
in terms of their own experience of forty years 
ago. The faculty is always divided into two camps. 
One type of professor is content to give the same 
lectures, read the same passages, and teach the 
same subjects in the same way in which he fell into 
teaching them within the first five years of his pro- 
fessional life. The professor of this type can make 
a professor's chair the easiest and softest sinecure 
to be found in the whole range of salaried positions. 
Another type of professor is always living on the 
frontiers of investigation and research, pushing for- 
ward the boundaries of the known, and penetrating 
into the confines of the unknown beyond. This type 
of professor probably does more and harder work 
for the money he receives than any class of men 
in the whole economic world. It is the duty of the 
constituency of an institution to watch those subtle 
tendencies that bring institutions into decrepitude 
and premature decay, to give their cordial appre- 
ciation and approval to every effort to push the 



302 THE SIX PARTNERS 

institution to the front, to insist that dead wood 
shall be mercilessly cut out, that new methods 
shall be adopted, new equipment secured, new 
policies attempted as soon as educational progress 
elsewhere, or the consensus of educational opinion, 
demands them. The students are always a great 
help in this matter, though, as has been previously 
indicated, their help is often rendered in rude and 
brutal ways. The alumni, especially the young 
alumni, can render their alma mater the greatest 
service at this point. They should compare the 
courses of study in their institution with the best 
courses that are offered elsewhere. They should 
watch with jealous interest every new election and 
appointment, and know precisely what the election 
or the appointment means ; whether it is on the 
side of retrogression or progress, whether it means 
improvement or decline. 

The increasing representation of the alumni on 
boards of government in our universities and col- 
leges is a most healthy and wholesome sign, though, 
of course, it needs to be guarded. The selection of 
alumni representatives should be made after care- 
ful and deliberate canvass, and full discussions of 
the qualifications and policies of candidates. No 
more intelligent and devoted service can be found 
than that which is freely and generously rendered 
by the representatives of the alumni of our col- 
leges and universities. It is for the alumni, and the 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 303 

friends whom they can interest, to supply our in- 
stitutions of learning with the material equipment 
which they need, and with the productive funds for 
their adequate maintenance. Most enthusiastically 
and generously this work is being done. There is 
no more hopeful feature of American life to-day 
than the generosity with which the alumni and 
friends of our colleges rally to their support in time 
of need. Magnificent buildings, splendid equip- 
ments, munificent endowments are being given to 
these institutions every year, partly by men who 
have gained their own education from them and 
gladly repay the debt they owe, and partly by men 
who have appreciated the worth of education 
through their own privation of it and generously 
desire to give to others what they have personally 
known only through the sense of loss. 

Academic freedom is not the simple question of 
whether a professor teaches or refrains from teach- 
ing this or that. As Plato says of justice, that it 
is the harmonious working of the several constitu- 
ent elements, whether in the State or in the indi- 
vidual, so academic freedom is the harmonious 
working of the six constituent elements of the uni- 
versity. An institution is enslaved when any one 
of these parties encroaches on the rights of others. 
Its slavery may come from either of the six sources, 
— meddlesome founders and dictatorial donors ; a 
State that is either too lax or too severe in its 



304 THE SIX PARTNERS 

supervision ; a president and trustees who are 
either arbitrary and partial, or negligent and in- 
competent ; professors who regard their mission of 
agitation in behalf of their own peculiar views as 
prior to their obligation to the interests of the in- 
stitution and the proportions of truth ; obstreper- 
ous and lawless students; and, lastly, indifferent 
and easy-going alumni, who forget the duty they 
owe to their alma mater, and permit her, without 
protest, to lapse into fossilization. 

A free institution, on the other hand, is one 
founded and maintained by benefactors who add 
to their gifts the greatest gift of all, a modest self- 
abnegation which recognizes that truth is larger 
than their private vision, and refuses to place per- 
sonal preference above expert judgment ; fostered 
by a State which is jealous for its efficiency ; ad- 
ministered by trustees who are as single-minded in 
the selection of the best men for its chairs of instruc- 
tion as they are for the most safe and profitable 
investment of their funds, and by a president who 
has sufficient authority to select whatever men and 
adopt whatever measures he finds essential to the 
maintenance of a consistent educational policy; 
manned by professors who love the truth and the 
institution and the students first, and themselves 
and their private fads last ; frequented by students 
who are intensely interested in intellectual, social, 
and athletic pursuits of their own selection and 



IN COLLEGE ADMINISTRATION 305 

creation ; watched over by an alert body of alumni 
and a vigilant public, ever insisting that wbat has 
proved good elsewhere shall be instantly adopted, 
and that their own institution shall take its fair 
share of the risks of such educational experiments 
as are essential to educational advance. 



XV 

The College^ 

THE best approach to a definition of the col- 
lege is by closing in upon it from the two 
sides of the institutions between which it stands, 
the school and the university. And as in the mari- 
ner's compass not only is there a northeast be- 
tween north and east, but several intervening 
points, so we shall find between the school and 
the college, a school-college, and between the uni- 
versity and the college, a university-college, which 
for our more accurate purposes we shall have to 
take into account. Before defining the college, let 
us define in order the school, the university, the 
school-college, and the university-college. 

The school imposes the symbols of communica- 
tion, together with the rudiments of science, litera- 
ture, and art, on the more or less unwilling child. 
I know the words " impose " and " unwilling " sound 
hard and harsh, and will evoke a protest from the 
advocates of the sugar-coated education. But with 
all due respect for what kindergarten devices, child- 

^ Paper read before the International Congress of Arts and 
Science, Department 23, Section C (the college), at the Louisiana 
Purchase Exposition at St. Louis, Mo., September 19-24, 1904. 



THE COLLEGE 307 

study, and pedagogical pre-digestion can do to make 
learning attractive, the school must be essentially 
a grind on facts and principles the full significance 
of which the child cannot appreciate, and which 
consequently must appear hard, dry, and dull. The 
world is so big and complex, the mind of the child 
is so small and simple, that the process of the ap- 
plication of the one to the other can scarcely be 
effective without considerable pain. Consequently, 
in the school there must be rigid discipline, judi- 
cious appeal to extraneous motives, and a firm 
background of unquestioned authority. I appreci- 
ate most highly all that has been done in the ways 
above referred to in the direction of mollifying this 
discipline. But in a brief definition of a great in- 
stitution, the essential, not the accidental elements, 
the enduring features, not the latest phases of it, 
must be emphasized. 

The university, including in that comprehensive 
term graduate, professional, and technical training, 
is the exact opposite of the school. The school 
brings together the large world and the child's 
small mind, involving the pain of mental stretch- 
ing to take in materials of which there is no con- 
scious want. The university presupposes the en- 
larged mind, which it applies to some small section 
of truth, such as law, medicine, architecture, engi- 
neering, dentistry, forestry, Latin, history, astro- 
nomy,or chemistry. This, too, is a somewhat painful 



308 THE COLLEGE 

process, but its pains are of the opposite nature, 
due to confining the enlarged mind, full of varied 
human interests, to the minute details of a narrow 
specialty. Of discipline the university has prac- 
tically nothing. It requires only intellectual re- 
sults. Such moral and spiritual influences as it 
affords are offered as opportunities rather than 
imposed as requirements. Its atmosphere is abso- 
lutely free. Its professors are specialists. Its stu- 
dents are supposed to be men. 

Having briefly defined the two institutions on 
either side, it might seem the proper time to pre- 
sent the definition of the college. But on both 
sides intermediary types have been evolved, which 
must be carefully distinguished from the college 
proper, — the school-college and the university- 
college. 

The school-college admits its students poorly 
prepared, and gives them in the school-college the 
work they ought to have done in the school. Its 
professors are schoolmasters, teaching several sub- 
jects, mainly by the school method of recitation 
from the book or repetition of dictated lectures. 
Laboratory work is confined chiefly to prearranged 
illustrative material. The conduct of the students 
is minutely supervised by the faculty. Little or 
nothing inside or outside of the recitation rooms is 
left to the initiative of the students. A considerable 
proportion of the so-called colleges of the United 



THE COLLEGE 309 

States are of this school-college type. They are 
inexpensive, and curiously enough the less en- 
dowment they have, the less it costs to attend 
them. Their graduates, unless by virtue of native 
wit, hardly have the breadth and initiative neces- 
sary for leadership in commercial, professional, and 
public life. 

By the university-college, I do not mean neces- 
sarily one connected with a university. A college 
connected with a university may be a real college, 
and a university-college may be connected with no 
university. Its distinctive mark is the application 
to immature students of methods of instruction and 
discipline which are adapted only to the mature. 
Its instruction is given in large lecture courses, 
with little or no personal interest in his students 
on the part of the lecturer, or required reaction 
on the part of the hearer. This personal contact 
is sometimes supplied vicariously in the person of 
a graduate student, or recently fledged doctor of 
philosophy, who quizzes fractions of the mass at 
stated intervals. The information imparted is the 
best and most advanced. The fame of the lecturers 
is unsurpassed. But the appropriation of the mate- 
rial presented is largely optional. As the personal 
element in teaching is largely vicarious, learning in 
turn tends to become vicarious also. Printed notes, 
expert coaches, improvised " seminars," reduce to 
comparatively few hours the labor of those who 



310 THE COLLEGE 

register themselves as students. Affording splen- 
did and unequaled opportunities for the earnest 
and studious few, these university-colleges afford 
the wealthy idler the elegant leisure that he craves. 

For the great majority of the students in a 
university-college, even athletics becomes likewise 
vicarious, the exertions of the elegant idler being 
confined mainly to the lungs and the pocketbook. 
In so vast a body the opportunity for social leader- 
ship and prominence in college affairs is confined 
to the exceptional few, impossible for the average 
many. The average boy of eighteen or twenty soon 
drifts into the irresponsibility of an unnoticed unit 
in the preponderating mass. Discipline in the uni- 
versity-college becomes practically limited to the 
requirement that the student shall exercise suffi- 
cient control over his animal and social instincts 
to maintain intense intellectual activity for two 
periods of two or three weeks in each college year. 

By thus closing in upon the college from both 
sides, and marking off the institutions which come 
so close to it that they are often confounded with 
it, we have made the definition of the real college 
comparatively easy^. We are now ready to describe 
its characteristic marks. 

It requires as a condition of admission that the 
work of the school shall have been thoroughly done. 
Either by examination before entering, or by elimi- 
nation at the first opportunity afterward, it strictly 



THE COLLEGE 311 

limits its students to those who have had a thorough 
school training. It does this because it is impossible 
to give a college education to an untrained mind. 
It is even more essential that a student shall have 
done hard work before coming to college, than that 
he shall do hard work while in college. The previ- 
ously trained mind can get a great deal out of col- 
lege with comparatively little work. The mind that 
has not been previously well trained can get very 
little out of college even by hard work. This may 
be a stumbling-block to the school man, and fool- 
ishness to the university man ; but the college man 
knows that in spite of these criticisms from below 
and from above an amount of leisure can well be 
afforded in college, which would be fatal in either 
academy or university. In order to be profitable, 
however, it must be the leisure of a mind previously 
subjected to prolonged and thorough discipline. 

The method of teaching in the college is on the 
whole different from that of either school or uni- 
versity. In the school the abstract facts and prin- 
ciples, as laid down in approved and authoritative 
books, are transmitted by the teacher to the student. 
The individual reconstruction of those principles 
and facts in the mind of teacher and student, though 
important, is relatively less essential. If by gift 
of genius you get this element of individuality in 
either teacher or student, you are profoundly grate- 
ful ; but the school can, and in a vast majority of 



312 THE COLLEGE 

cases must, get on without the interpreting individ- 
uality of the teacher and the reconstructive unifi- 
cation of the student. I am speaking not of ideals, 
but of facts. 

Now there is room for the schoolmaster in the 
college, but his sphere is very limited. In formal 
studies like mathematics, and the elements of such 
languages as have not been previously acquired, 
every college ought to have two or three thorough 
drillmasters on its faculty. There is nothing about 
a college atmosphere that can make analytical geo- 
metry easy, or the irregular French verb fascinat- 
ing, or German prose sentences intelhgible without 
grammar. Such school work as our requirements 
for admission permit to be postponed until after 
admission to college must be done there in the hard, 
exacting school way. 

In the university it is the individuality of the 
student that counts. Not the facts in the text-book, 
not the insight and interpretation of the professor, 
but the initiative of the individual student is what 
the university is after. The college in the more 
advanced courses must introduce also a moderate 
degree of this university element. Most of our col- 
leges, by the group system or by the requirement 
of major and minor subjects as a condition of taking 
the bachelor's degree, insist that something like a 
fourth or a third of a student's courses shall lead 
up to and culminate in such comparatively inde- 



THE COLLEGE 313 

pendent work. In this way we give every college 
student a taste of real scholarly work, and discover 
the comparatively few who are fitted to prosecute 
it to advantage in the university. 

The college professor, the type to which the ma- 
jority of the college faculty should belong, is very 
different from either the schoolmaster or the univer- 
sity specialist. He is a man who grasps his subject 
as a whole, deals with each aspect of it in its rela- 
tion to the whole, is able to make the subject as 
a whole unfold from day to day, and grow in the 
mind of the student into the same splendid propor- 
tions that it has assumed in his own, and who 
can put it to the test of practical application in 
matters of current interest. If he is a chemist, he 
is able to give expert testimony in court. If a geol- 
ogist, he is able to take part in government surveys, 
or lead in exploration. If an economist, he is able 
to contribute something to the settlement of labor 
troubles. If a historian or professor of government, 
he must be able to bring ancient precedent and re- 
mote experience to bear on current complications. 
If a professor of the classics, he must love the mas- 
ters of English prose and verse all the better for his 
familiarity with the ancient models, and show how 
much more the modern things mean when thrown 
on the ancient backgTound. College students de- 
spise a professor who is so lost in his subject that 
he cannot get out of it, prove its worth by some 



314 THE COLLEGE 

concrete application, and make life as a whole the 
larger and richer by the contribution he makes from 
his special department. He must be human, in- 
tensely interested in individuals, eager to see his 
favorite authors, his beloved pursuits kindle into 
enthusiasm the minds he introduces to them. The 
college professor must know his subject ; he must 
be a competent investigator in it, and a thorough 
master of it. If as a badge of such mastery and apt- 
itude for investigation he has the degree of Ph. D., 
all the better. But this is not essential. He must 
know men, and the large movements and interests 
of the world outside. He must present his subject, 
lit up with the enthusiasm of a great personality, 
an enthusiasm so contagious that the students can- 
not help catching it from him, and regarding his 
subject for the time being as the most compelling 
interest in life. He must be genial, meeting stu- 
dents in informal, friendly ways outside of lecture 
rooms, either in general social intercourse or in little 
clubs for the prosecution of interests related to his 
subject. He must have high standards of personal 
character and conduct, and broad charity for those 
who fall below them. In short, he must be first of 
all a man whom young men respect, admire, and 
imitate, and love ; and then in addition he must 
know the subject he professes in the broad, vital, 
practical, contagious way described above. 

The course of study in a college covers in a broad 



THE COLLEGE 315 

way the main departments of language and litera- 
ture, science and art, history, economics, and philo- 
sophy. At least four languages besides English : 
Latin, Greek, French, and German ; mathematics ; 
at least four sciences : physics, chemistry, biology, 
and geology or astronomy ; history both ancient and 
modern, both American and European ; both ortho- 
dox economic theory and current economic heresy, 
together with special study of such subjects as bank- 
ing, taxation, transportation, trust and labor prob- 
lems ; the principles and problems* of government, 
both national and municipal; literature studied 
as literature, and not merely the corpse of it in 
the shroud of grammar and the coffin of philology ; 
philosophy, or the attempted answer to the per- 
petual problems of ontology, cosmology, conduct, 
and human aspiration ; enough of fine art to make 
one at home in the great buildings and galleries of 
the world — these are the essentials of the college 
curriculum. 

Each of the leading subjects should be presented 
in at least three consecutive courses extending over 
a year each, — one elementary ; one or more broad, 
general, interesting, practical ; at least one specific, 
intensive, involving research, initiative, and a chance 
for originality. These broad middle courses are the 
distinctive feature of the college, and they are the 
hardest to get well taught. For one man who can 
teach a college course of this nature well, you can 



316 THE COLLEGE 

find ten wlio can teach a university specialty, and a 
hundred who can teach the elementary school course. 
But if you dare to leave out these broad, compre- 
hensive college courses, or if you fail to get men 
who are broad and human enough to teach them, 
you miss the distinctively college teaching alto- 
gether ; you have in place of the college one or an- 
other of the four institutions previously described. 

These real college professors, — these men who 
can make truth kindle and glow through the dead, 
cold facts of science, who can reveal the throbbing 
heart of humanity through either ancient or modern 
words, who can communicate the shock of clashing 
wills and the struggle of elemental forces through 
historic periods and economic schedules, who can 
make philosophy the revelation of God, and ethics 
the gateway of heaven, — these men are hard to 
find, infinitely harder to find than schoolmasters 
on the one hand and specialists on the other. Yet 
unless you can get together at least half a dozen 
men of this type, you must not pretend to call your 
aggregation of professors a college faculty ; you 
cannot give your students the distinctive value of 
a college course. 

The discipline of a college is different from that 
of either a school or a university. The true college 
maintains a firm authority, and will close its doors 
rather than yield any essential point of moral 
character or intellectual efficiency to student clamor 



THE COLLEGE 317 

and caprice. Yet this authority is kept well in the 
background, delegated perhaps to some form of 
student government, and is used only as a last 
resort when all the arts of persuasion and all the 
influences of reason fail. Not more than once or 
twice in a college generation of four years will it 
be necessary to draw the lines sharply, and fight 
out some carefully chosen issue on grounds of sheer 
authority. 

On the other hand, the college has much of the 
liberty of the university ; yet in such wise that it 
cannot be perverted into license to do whatever 
may seem for the time being right in the eyes of 
immature and inexperienced youth. Spies and 
threats, and petty artificial penalties, are as foreign 
to a true college as to a university. Yet the college 
does make the way of the transgressor hard, much 
harder than the university ever attempts to do. 

What, then, is the secret, what is the method 
of true college discipline, which avoids both these 
extremes, yet secures the advantages at which both 
school and university aim ? It is personal friend- 
liness, intelligent sympathy, appealing to what is 
best in the heart of the college student. By inti- 
mate appreciation of all worthy student interests, 
ambitions, and enthusiasms, the college officer comes 
to understand by way of contrast whatever is base, 
corrupt, and wanton in the life of the little com- 
munity, and to know by intuition the men who 



318 THE COLLEGE 

are caught in the toils of these temptations. Any- 
competent college officer can give you, if not off- 
hand, certainly after a half-hour's consultation, an 
accurate account of the character of any student in 
his institution ; his haunts, his habits, his companions, 
his ways of spending time and money, and all that 
these involve. Where it seems to be needed, either 
some professor or the president has a friendly con- 
ference with the student, — bringing him face to 
face with the facts and their natural consequences, 
but making no threats, imposing no penalties, 
simply calling the student's attention to principles 
with which he is already perfectly familiar, and 
offering him whatever help and encouragement 
toward amendment friendly interest and sympa- 
thy can give. Usually the whole matter is strictly 
confidential between officer and student ; though 
when this proves inadequate the aid of students 
likely to have influence is secured, and in extreme 
cases the cooperation of parents and friends at 
home is invoked. Information that is directly or 
indirectly acquired through this close sympathy 
with student life is never made the basis of any 
formal discipline whatever. A student may persist 
in evil ways, and be known to persist in them, and 
be treated by the college in no other way than he 
would be treated in similar circumstances by his 
father and mother at home. If he performs his 
work and avoids scandal, he may go on and gradu- 



THE COLLEGE 319 

ate, precisely as he might continue to live under 
his father's roof. If his evil courses lead to fail- 
ure in his work, or if they bring scandal upon the 
college through overt acts or obviously injurious 
influence, then he is asked to withdraw. 

Such, in brief, is the spirit of college discipline. 
It fits neither the immature nor the mature, but 
youth who are passing from immaturity into ma- 
turity. It appeals to the highest and best motives, 
and scorns to deal with any others. It brings to 
bear the strongest personal influences it can sum- 
mon, but deigns to use no others. It sometimes 
fails, but is usually in the long run successful. It 
presupposes absolute sincerity, perfect frankness, 
endless patience, infinite kindliness on the part of 
the college ofiicer. It is sure to be misunderstood 
by the general public. It takes the average student 
about half his college course to come to an under- 
standing of it. It lays those who employ it open 
to the charge of aU manner of partiality, weakness, 
inefficiency, from those who look at the outside 
facts and do not comprehend the inner spirit. But 
it is the only discipline that fits the college stage of 
development ; it does its work on the whole effec- 
tively ; it turns out as a rule loyal alumni, moral 
citizens, Christian men. 

In its religious life the college should be as little 
as possible denominational. The narrowness of sec- 
tarianism and the breadth of the college outlook are 



320 THE COLLEGE 

utterly incompatible. Denominations may lay the 
eggs of colleges ; indeed, most of our colleges owe 
their inception to such denominational zeal. But 
as soon as the college develops strength, it passes 
inevitably beyond mere denominational control. 
Church schools are often conspicuous successes. 
Church colleges are usually conspicuous failures. 
A church university is a contradiction in terms. 

It is equally necessary that the college should 
be intensely Christian. The administrative officer 
should believe in the power of the best motives 
over the worst men and the application of great 
principles to little things. He should know that 
persons are more than the acts that they do. He 
should believe what most people practically deny, 
— that a sinner can be saved ; and that he is worth 
saving. It is only on such a profoundly Christian 
basis that a college can be successfully conducted. 
A college which is not Christian is no college at 
all. For the faithful, hopeful, loving treatment of 
persons as free beings of boundless capacity and 
infinite worth is at once the essence of Christianity 
and the distinguishing mark of the true college. 

Christianity in the college, as everywhere else 
in the world, presents the two aspects which Jesus 
contrasted in the parable of the two sons whom 
the father asked to work in his vineyard. There 
is the conscious, professed, organized Christianity, 
which joins the church and the association, attends 



THE COLLEGE 321 

and takes part in meetings, and casts about to find 
or invent ways to make both the world and one's 
self better than they otherwise would be. Some- 
times, unfortunately, the Christian of this type 
neglects that devotion of himself to such forms of 
good as are already established, — the intellectual 
tasks, the athletic interests, the social life of the 
institution. In that case the result is that, good as 
it means to be, good as in many respects it is, this 
type of Christianity fails to be appreciated by the 
majority of the students ; the leadership of all 
forms of college life passes into other hands, and 
this avowed, expressed, organized Christianity lives 
at a poor dying rate, by faculty assistance and 
student toleration. People who forget the lesson of 
the parable that there are two types of Christianity, 
and confound this type with the whole of Christian- 
ity, sometimes take a very discouraged view of the 
condition of Christianity in our colleges. 

What, then, is the other, the relatively uncon- 
scious, unprofessing type? Who is the Christian 
who, as Jesus says, in the judgment day will be 
surprised to find that he was a Christian at all ? 
He is the man who lives for something bigger and 
better, loses himself in something wider and higher 
than himself. He does his work with a sense of 
responsibility for the honest improvement of his 
powers and opportunities, or, better still, with de- 
votion to some aspect of scientific truth or human 



322 THE COLLEGE 

weKare that has gotten hold of him. He enters 
heartily into the sports and enthusiasms of his 
fellows, sacrificing comfort and convenience to the 
promotion of these common ends. He shares his 
time and property with his friends, and supports 
generously their common undertakings. He stands 
up for what is right, yet always has a helping hand 
for the fellow who has fallen down. He looks 
forward to life as a sphere where he is going to 
serve public interests and promote social welfare, 
at the same time that he supports himself and his 
family. 

Now, if this is Christianity, if the cultivation of 
these traits and aims is growth in Christian char- 
acter, then our colleges are mighty agencies for the 
spread of Christianity. No man can go through 
one of them, and catch its spirit, without becoming 
a better Christian for the remainder of his days. 

Of course it is highly desirable that these two 
types of Christianity should understand and ap- 
preciate each other. Especially fortunate is the 
college where these two types coincide, where the 
most prominent members of church and association 
are at the same time the best fellows, and where 
the best fellows give their influence and support 
as officers and workers in distinctively Christian 
organizations. In some men's colleges, and in most 
women's colleges, this is happily the case. If, how- 
ever, we can have but one of the two types, as 



THE COLLEGE 323 

often happens, we must agree with Jesus that good 
work and good fellowship on a basis unconsciously 
Christian are better than a conscious profession 
which remains self-centred and self-satisfied, out- 
side the more genial and generous current of the 
life of the community. 

The last feature of the college, but by no means 
the least significant, is this genial, generous, social 
life. Even if nothing were learned save by absorp- 
tion through the pores, the intimate association 
with picked men of trained minds for the most im- 
pressionable years of one's life would almost be 
worth while. To take one's place in such a com- 
munity, to bear one's share in its common in- 
terests and common endeavor, to take the social 
consequences of one's attitude and actions in a 
community which sees clearly and speaks frankly, 
rewards generously and punishes unmercifully, is 
the best school of character and conduct ever yet 
devised. 

This is the leading consideration in determining 
the desirable size of a college. As Plato says of 
the state we may say of the college, it should be 
as large as is consistent with organic unity. If 
some types of life and character — the rich or the 
poor, the independent or the conservative, the high 
scholar or the good fellow, the athlete or the man 
of artistic temperament — are left out, then it is 
too small. Lf, on the other hand, a man can be a 

7- 



324 THE COLLEGE 

mere unit in a mass toward which he feels httle 
or no definite responsibility, — if his specific con- 
tribution is not needed and his individual opinion 
does not count, if the games are played, and the 
papers are edited, and the societies are managed, 
and things generally are conducted by experts 
whom he merely knows by sight and reputation, 
— then that college is too large for him; he will 
probably come out of it as small as he went in. 

For the most enjoyable and profitable social life 
the college community inevitably breaks up into 
little groups, — fraternities, musical associations, 
athletic teams, and clubs for scientific, literary, 
historical, and philosophical study. Extension and 
intensity are inversely proportional ; and a man 
who misses the closer contact and warmer fellow- 
ship of these smaller groups misses much that is 
most valuable in college life. Athletics are carried 
to excess, as is everything else in which youth 
take a leading part. But the incidental excesses 
of a few individuals are much more than counter- 
balanced by the increased physical health, moral 
tone, and freedom from asceticism and effeminacy 
in the college community as a whole. Cut off as 
they are from the natural outdoor tasks and sports, 
from chores and workshops, from hunting and fish- 
ing, from sailing and riding, some artificial outlet 
for physical vigor is absolutely essential. Some ob- 
ject for community enthusiasm, community loyalty, 



THE COLLEGE 325 

and community sacrifice is equally a moral and 
a social necessity. The worst evil of athletics is 
not the effort put forth by the athletes themselves, 
but the extent to which these interests absorb the 
time and conversation, the thought and aspiration, 
of both combatants and non-combatants. Even this 
evil, great as it is, is small in comparison to the 
moral evils which would infest a group of vigor- 
ous young men from whom some such outlet was 
withheld. 

The fraternities and societies likewise have slight 
possibilities of evil, but accomplish an overwhelming 
preponderance of good. It is through them, directly 
or indirectly, that the most effective personal and 
social influence can be brought to bear on those 
who need it. Occasionally a fraternity drops to the 
level of making mere good fellowship an exclusive 
end, to which scholarship, morality, efficiency are 
merely incidental. A college is fortunate which at 
any given time does not have one or two frater- 
nities that are tending in this direction. But the 
contempt of their rivals, the influence of their 
graduates, the self-respect of the better members 
themselves, together with direct or indirect fac- 
ulty remonstrance, serve to bring a fraternity to 
its senses in a quarter of the time it would take 
to straighten out an equal number of isolated indi- 
viduals. Isolated good and isolated evil are more 
nearly on an equality. But good influence can be 



326 THE COLLEGE 

organized and mobilized a hundred times as quickly 
and effectively as evil influence ; and where the 
moral forces in faculty and students are alert, the 
fraternities serve as rallying points for the concen- 
tration of the good and the dispersion of the evil. 

Departmental clubs, in which one or two mem- 
bers of the faculty meet informally with a few 
of the more interested students for conference on 
some phase of their subject, are perhaps the con- 
summation of the college spirit. Modern methods 
of instruction, however, make contact in the lab- 
oratory over experiments and in the library in 
research so close that many of the regxdar classes 
assume more the aspect of a club than a class. 
The newest and best college libraries provide small 
rooms for the use of books by professors and 
students together in each literary and historical 
department, and regard such rooms quite as indis- 
pensable as the room where books are stored. 

There is one serious danger, and only one, that 
besets the college. The ordinary objections, hazing, 
excessive athletics, dissipation, lawlessness, idleness, 
are due either to exaggeration of exceptional cases, 
or the unwarranted expectation that large aggre- 
gations of youth will conduct themselves with the 
decorum that is becoming where two or three ma- 
ture saints are gathered together for conference 
and prayer. I grant that a man who cherishes this 
expectation will be disappointed ; and if he chances 



THE COLLEGE 327 

to be a college officer, and undertakes to realize 
this expectation, lie will be deservedly miserable. 
With all its incidental follies and excesses, college 
conduct is more orderly, college judgment is more 
reasonable, college character is more earnest and 
upright, than are the judgment, conduct, and char- 
acter of youth of the same age in factories, offices, 
and stores, or on farms or on shipboard. As far 
as these matters go, college is, physically, mentally, 
and morally, the safest place in the world for a 
young man. 

The one serious danger is so subtle that the 
public has never suspected its existence ; and even 
to many a college officer the statement of it will 
come as a surprise. It is the danger of missing 
that solitude which is the soil of individuality and 
the fertilizer of genius. College life is excessively 
gregarious. Men herd together so closely and con- 
stantly that they are in danger of becoming too 
much alike. The pursuit of four or five subjects 
at the same time tends to destroy that concen- 
tration of attention to one thing on which great 
achievement rests. The same feverish interest in 
athletics, the same level of gossip, the same atti- 
tude toward politics and religion tend to pass by 
contagion from the mass to the individual, and 
supersede independent reflection. The attractive- 
ness and charm of this intense life of the college 
group tends to become an end in itself, so that 



328 THE COLLEGE 

the very power which wholesomely takes the stu- 
dent out of himself into the group, invites him to 
stop in the group instead of going on into those 
intellectual and social interests which the college 
is supposed to serve. This devotion to college ra- 
ther than to learning, to the fellows rather than 
to humanity, to fraternities and teams rather than 
to church and state, is a real danger to all stu- 
dents, anfl a very serious danger to the exceptional 
individuals who have the spark of originality hid- 
den within their souls. The same forces that ex- 
pand small, and even average, men may tend to 
repress and stunt these souls of larger endowment. 
To guard against this — to make sure that the 
man of latent genius is protected against this dead- 
ening mfluence of social compulsion toward me- 
diocrity — is one of the great duties of the wise 
college professor. He must show the student of 
unusual gifts that he is appreciated and under- 
stood, and encourage him to live in the college 
atmosphere as one who is at the same time apart 
from it and above it. The formation of little groups, 
temporary or permanent, among the more earnest 
students for mutual recognition and support, groups 
which actually do for a student while in college 
what Phi Beta Kappa attempts to do in a merely 
formal and honorary way afterwards, may help 
these choice minds to stem this tide of gregarious 
mediocrity. Wherever the faculty is alert to detect 



THE COLLEGE 329 

its presence, even genius can thrive and flourish in 
a college atmosphere. 

Such is the college. It is an institution where 
young men and young women study great sub- 
jects, under broad teachers, in a liberty which is 
not license and a leisure which is not idleness, 
— with unselfish participation in a common life 
and intense devotion to minor groups within the 
larger body and special interests inside the general 
aim ; conscious that they are critically watched by 
friendly eyes, too kind ever to take unfair advan- 
tage of their weaknesses and errors, yet too keen 
ever to be deceived. 

The function of the college follows so obviously 
from the concept that it requires but a word to 
draw the inference. It makes its graduates the 
heirs of all the wisdom and experience of the ages, 
placing, if not within their actual memories, at 
least within the reach of their developed powers 
and trained methods, any great aspect of nature or 
humanity they may hereafter wish to acquire. It 
gives each one of them a sense of achievement and 
mastery in some one subject of his choice, giving 
him, in that one department at least, the impulse 
to read its books and study its problems as long 
as he shall live. It places its alumnus on a plane 
of social equality with the best people he will ever 
meet, and gives him a spirit of helpfulness toward 
the lowliest with whom he will ever come in con- 



330 THE COLLEGE 

tact. It makes him the servant of the state in wise 
counsel and effective leadership. It gives to the 
church ministers who can do more than turn the 
cranks of ecclesiastical machinery and repeat ritu- 
alized tradition, prophets who gain first-hand con- 
tact with the purposes of God. It prepares men 
who will bring to the study and practice of law 
ability to apply eternal principles and ancient pre- 
cedents to the latest phases of our complex civiliza- 
tion. It trains its graduates who practice medicine 
to give each patient the benefit of whatever science 
is developing of healing efficacy for his particular 
case. It trains men who are to be engineers, bank- 
ers, manufacturers, merchants, to put the solidity 
and integrity of natural law into the structures 
fchat they rear, the institutions they control, the 
fabrics they produce, and the transactions they 
direct. It trains men and women who will give to 
domestic and social life that unselfishness and gen- 
iality which come of having the mind lifted above 
the selfish, the artificial, the petty, into sincere and 
simple intercourse with the good, the true, and the 
beautiful. 

The function of the college, then, is not mental 
training on the one hand nor specialized knowledge 
on the other. Intiidentally, it may do these things 
at the beginning and at the end of the course, as a 
completion of the unfinished work of the school, 
and a preparation for the future pursuits of the 



THE COLLEGE 331 

university. The function of the college is liberal 
education, — the opening of the mind to the great 
departments of human interest ; the opening of the 
heart to the great spiritual motives of unselfishness 
and social service ; the opening of the will to op- 
portunity for wise and righteous self-control. Hav- 
ing a different task from either school or university, 
it has developed a method and spirit, a life and 
leisure, of its own. Judged by school standards it 
appears weak, indulgent, superficial. Judged by 
university standards it appears vague, general, in- 
definite. Judge it by its true standard as an agency 
of liberal education, judge it by its function to 
make men and women who have wide interests, 
generous aims, and high ideals, and it will vindi- 
cate itself as the most efficient means yet devised 
to take well-trained boys and girls from the school 
and send them either on to the university or out 
into life with a breadth of intellectual view no 
subsequent specialization can ever take away; a 
strength of moral purpose the forces of material- 
istic selfishness can never break down ; a passion 
for social service neither popular superstition nor 
political corruption can deflect from its chosen 
path. 



XVI 

Alum7ii Ideals 

* 

TO weigh material goods in tlie scales of per- 
sonal values, and measure life by the standard 
of love; to prize health as contagious happiness, 
wealth as potential service, reputation as latent 
influence, learning for the light it can shed, power 
for the help it can give, station for the good it can 
do ; to choose in each case what is best on the 
whole, and accept cheerfully incidental evils in- 
volved ; to put my whole self into all that I do, 
and indulge no single desire at the expense of my- 
self as a whole ; to crowd out fear by devotion to 
duty, and see present and future as one; to treat 
others as I would be treated, and myself as I would 
my best friend ; to lend no oil to the foolish, but 
let my light shine freely for all ; to make no gain 
by another's loss, and buy no pleasure with another's 
pain ; to harbor no thought of another which I 
should be unwilling that other should know ; to say 
nothing unkind to amuse myself, and nothing false 
to please others ; to take no pride in weaker men's 
failings, and bear no malice toward those who do 
wrong; to pity the selfish no less than the poor, 
the proud as much as the outcast, and the cruel 



ALUMNI IDEALS 333 

even more than the oppressed ; to worship God in 
all that is good and true and beautiful ; to serve 
Christ wherever a sad heart can be made happy or 
a wrong will set right ; and to recognize God's 
coming kingdom in every institution and person 
that helps men to love one another. 



Electrotyped and Printed by H. O. Houghton <5r» Co. 
Cambridge y Mass.f U. S. A. 



WHAT IS RELIGION: and Other 
Student Questions 

By Henry S. Prttchett, President of the 
Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 
Narrow 12 mo, ^i.oo, net. Postage 
extra. 

Five vigorous, broad-minded addresses to 
college students, written by President Prit- 
chett who seeks to influence young men 
who are especially under the sway of the 
modern scientific spirit. He shows how in 
the larger sense. Science includes the be- 
liefs of Religion in its scope and that the 
two are not mutually exclusive. Mr. Prit- 
chett believes that if the student s attention 
and his interest are to be drawn to higher 
things it must be through a leadership 
which faces frankly the philosophy of the 
time and which deals with the facts of 
science and of religion in a spirit of intel- 
lectual sincerity. 

Published by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
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ON THE THRESHOLD 

By Rev. Theodore T. Hunger. 
Crown 8vo, i.oo. 

" It is the frank, wise, inspiring work of a 
man who carries a high ideal into the cir- 
cumstances of an average American commu- 
nity. The book is remarkable in its union 
of enthusiasm with good sense. Dr. Mun- 
ger is an idealist, a man of intuition, quick 
to see and keen to feel the higher spiritual 
aspects of the world. He strikes always at 
the central principle of his subject. There 
is nothing ascetic, nothing narrow, in the 
type of life he commends ; his influence 
goes toward a manhood which is large, vital, 
and joyful, as well as sound and faithful." — 
The Century, New York. 

Published by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
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ROUTINE AND IDEALS 

By Le Baron R. Briggs, President of Rad- 
cliffe College. 
i6mo, $i.oo, net. Postage 9 cents. 

" Common sense enriched by culture de- 
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ought now to be called, President, Briggs 
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over his thought, and he combines in an un- 
usual degree the faculty of vision and the 
power of dealing with real things in a real 
way." — The Outlook, New York. 

SCHOOL, COLLEGE, AND 
CHARACTER 

By the Author of " Routine and Ideals." 
i6mo, $1.00, net. Postage 8 cents. 

" With the soundest good sense and with 
frequent humorous flashes, Dean Briggs 
takes students and parents into his confi- 
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of the * office' but of a very clear-think- 
ing, whole-souled man in the ' office ' " — The 
World's Work, New York. 

Published by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
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MORNINGS IN THE COLLEGE 
CHAPEL 

By Francis G. Peabody, Plummer Profes- 
sor of Christian Morals in Harvard 
University. i6mo, $1.25. 

" The book consists of short, pregnant ad- 
dresses to the Harvard undergraduates on 
spiritual themes. So varied in theme, so rich 
in thought, so lighted up with pertinency and 
beauty of illustration, and, finally, so rare in 
their power of spiritual uplift are these ad- 
dresses as to suggest how literally Hamlet 
may have meant it when he cried, ' O God, 
I could be bounded in a nutshell, and yet 
count myself king of infinite space.' " — Rev. 
Francis Tiffany, in the Boston Herald. 

AFTERNOONS IN THE COL- 
LEGE CHAPEL 

By the Author of " Mornings in the Col- 
lege Chapel." i6mo, $1.25. 

" These addresses are nobly thoughtful, 
yet extremely simple and unaffected, strong, 
direct, and tender in the uplifting spiritual- 
ity of their appeal." — The Christian Advo- 
cate, New York. 

Published by HOUGHTON, MIFFLIN & CO. 
Boston and New York 



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